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E-democracy

E-democracy (a blend of the terms electronic and democracy), also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is credited to digital activist Steven Clift. By using 21st-century ICT, e-democracy seeks to enhance democracy, including aspects like civic technology and E-government. Proponents argue that by promoting transparency in decision-making processes, e-democracy can empower all citizens to observe and understand the proceedings. Also, if they possess overlooked data, perspectives, or opinions, they can contribute meaningfully. This contribution extends beyond mere informal disconnected debate; it facilitates citizen engagement in the proposal, development, and actual creation of a country's laws. In this way, e-democracy has the potential to incorporate crowdsourced analysis more directly into the policy-making process. Electronic democracy incorporates a diverse range of tools that use both existing and emerging information sources. These tools provide a platform for the public to express their concerns, interests, and perspectives, and to contribute evidence that may influence decision-making processes at the community, national, or global level. E-democracy leverages both traditional broadcast technologies such as television and radio, as well as newer interactive internet-enabled devices and applications, including polling systems. These emerging technologies have become popular means of public participation, allowing a broad range of stakeholders to access information and contribute directly via the internet. Moreover, large groups can offer real-time input at public meetings using electronic polling devices. Utilizing information and communication technology (ICT), e-democracy bolsters political self-determination. It collects social, economic, and cultural data to enhance democratic engagement. As a concept that encompasses various applications within differing democratic structures, e-democracy has substantial impacts on political norms and public engagement. It emerges from theoretical explorations of democracy and practical initiatives to address societal challenges through technology. The extent and manner of its implementation often depend on the specific form of democracy adopted by a society, thus shaped by both internal dynamics and external technological developments. When designed to present both supporting and opposing evidence and arguments for each issue, apply conflict resolution and Cost–benefit analysis techniques, and actively address confirmation bias and other cognitive biases, E-Democracy could potentially foster a more informed citizenry. However, the development of such a system poses significant challenges. These include designing sophisticated platforms to achieve these aims, navigating the dynamics of populism while acknowledging that not everyone has the time or resources for full-time policy analysis and debate, promoting inclusive participation, and addressing cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Despite these hurdles, some envision e-democracy as a potential facilitator of more participatory governance, a countermeasure to excessive partisan dogmatism, a problem-solving tool, a means for evaluating the validity of pro/con arguments, and a method for balancing power distribution within society. Throughout history, social movements have adapted to use the prevailing technologies as part of their civic engagement and social change efforts. This trend persists in the digital era, illustrating how technology shapes democratic processes. As technology evolves, it inevitably impacts all aspects of society, including governmental operations. This ongoing technological advancement brings new opportunities for public participation and policy-making while presenting challenges such as cybersecurity threats, issues related to the digital divide, and privacy concerns. Society is actively grappling with these complexities, striving to balance leveraging technology for democratic enhancement and managing its associated risks. Considerations E-democracy incorporates elements of both representative and direct democracy. In representative democracies, which characterize most modern systems, responsibilities such as law-making, policy formation, and regulation enforcement are entrusted to elected officials. This differs from direct democracies, where citizens undertake these duties themselves. Motivations for e-democracy reforms are diverse and reflect the desired outcomes of its advocates. Some aim to align government actions more closely with the public's interest, akin to populism, diminish the influence of media, political parties, and lobbyists, or use public input to assess potential costs and benefits of each policy. E-democracy, in its unstructured form, emphasizes direct participation and has the potential to redistribute political power from elected officials to individuals or groups. However, reforms aimed at maximizing benefits and minimizing costs might require structures that mimic a form of representation, conceivable if the public had the capacity to debate and analyze issues full-time. Given the design of electronic forums that can accommodate extensive debate, e-democracy has the potential to mimic aspects of representation on a much larger scale. These structures could involve public education initiatives or systems that permit citizens to contribute based on their interests or expertise. From this standpoint, e-democracy appears less concerned with what the public believes to be true and more focused on the evidence the public can demonstrate as true. This view reveals a tension within e-democratic reforms between populism and an evidence-based approach akin to the scientific method or the Enlightenment principles. A key indicator of the effectiveness of a democratic system is the successful implementation of policy. To facilitate this, voters must comprehend the implications of each policy approach, evaluate its costs and benefits, and consider historical precedents for policy effectiveness. Some proponents of e-democracy argue that technology can enable citizens to perform these tasks as effectively, if not more so, than traditional political parties within representative democracies. By harnessing technological advancements, e-democracy has the potential to foster more informed decision-making and enhance citizen involvement in the democratic process. History E-democracy traces back to the development of information and communication technology (ICT) and the evolution of democratic structures. It encompasses initiatives from governments to interact with citizens through digital means and grassroots activities using electronic platforms to influence governmental practices. Early developments The inception of e-democracy corresponds with the rise of the Internet in the late 20th century. The diffusion of personal computers and the Internet during the 1990s led to the initiation of electronic government initiatives. Digital platforms, such as forums, chat rooms, and email lists, were pivotal in fostering public discourse, thereby encouraging informal civic engagement online. These platforms provided an accessible medium for individuals to discuss ideas and issues, and they were utilized by both governments and citizens to promote dialogue, advocate for change, and involve the public in decision-making processes. Concept and approach The structure of the Internet, which currently embodies characteristics such as decentralization, open standards, and universal access, has been observed to align with principles often associated with democracy. These democratic principles have their roots in federalism and Enlightenment values like openness and individual liberty. Steven Clift, a notable proponent of e-democracy, suggests that the Internet should be utilized to enhance democratic processes and provide increased opportunities for interaction between individuals, communities, and the government. He emphasizes the importance of structuring citizen-to-citizen discussions online within existing power structures and maintaining significant reach within the community for these discussions to hold agenda-setting potential. The concept involves endorsing individuals or policies committed to leveraging internet technologies to amplify public engagement without modifying or substituting existing constitutions. The approach includes data collection, analysis of advantages and disadvantages, evaluation of interests, and facilitating discussions around potential outcomes. Late 20th century to early 21st century In the late 20th century and early into the 21st century, e-democracy started to become more structured as governments worldwide started to explore its potential. One major development was the rise of e-government initiatives, which aimed to provide public services online. One of the first instances of such an initiative was the establishment of the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) by the United States government in 1994. GILS was a searchable database of government information accessible to citizens and businesses, and it served as a tool to improve agency electronic records management practices. Along with the rise of e-government services, government websites started to spring up, aiming to improve communication with citizens, increase transparency, and make administrative tasks easier to accomplish online. The mid-2000s ushered in the era of Web 2.0, emphasizing user-generated content, interoperability, and collaboration. This period witnessed the rise of social media platforms, blogs, and other collaborative tools, further amplifying the potential for e-democracy through increasing opportunities for public participation and interaction. Concepts like crowdsourcing and open-source governance gained traction, advocating for broader and more direct public involvement in policymaking. As the digital age progressed, so too did the interaction between governments and citizens. The advent and rapid adoption of the internet globally catalyzed this transformation. With high internet penetration in many regions, politics have increasingly relied on the internet as a primary source of information for numerous people. This digital shift has been supported by the rise in online advertising among political candidates and groups actively trying to sway public opinion or directly influence legislators. This trend is especially noticeable among younger voters, who often regard the internet as their primary source of information due to its convenience and ability to streamline their information-gathering process. The user-friendly nature of search engines like Google and social networks encourages increased citizen engagement in political research and discourse. Social networks, for instance, offer platforms where individuals can voice their opinions on governmental issues without fear of judgement. The vast scale and decentralized structure of the internet enable anyone to create viral content and influence a wide audience. The Internet facilitates citizens in accessing and disseminating information about politicians while simultaneously providing politicians with insights from a broader citizen base. This collaborative approach to decision-making and problem-solving empowers citizens. It accelerates decision-making processes by politicians, thereby fostering a more efficient society. Gathering citizen feedback and perspectives is essential to a politician's role. The Internet functions as a conduit for effective engagement with a larger audience. Consequently, this enhanced communication with the public strengthens the capability and effectiveness of the American government as a democracy. The 2016 U.S. presidential election is an example of social media integration in political campaigns, where both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton actively utilized Twitter as a communication tool. These platforms allow candidates to shape public perceptions while also humanizing their personas, suggesting that political figures are as approachable and relatable as ordinary individuals. Through resources such as Google, the Internet enables every citizen to readily research political topics. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram encourage political engagement, allowing users to share their political views and connect with like-minded individuals. Generation X's disillusionment with political processes, epitomized by large-scale public protests such as the U.K. miners' strike of 1984-1985 that appeared to fail, predated the widespread availability of information technology to individual citizens. There is a perception that e-democracy could address some of these concerns by offering a counter to the insularity, power concentration, and post-election accountability deficit often associated with traditional democratic processes organized primarily around political parties. Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader of the U.K. Labour Party, once stated: Despite the benefits of the digital shift, one of the challenges of e-democracy is the potential disconnect between politics and actual government implementation. While the internet provides a platform for robust political discourse, translating these discussions into effective government action can be complex. This gap can often be exacerbated by the rapid pace of digital dialogue, which may outpace the slower, more deliberative processes of policy-making. The rise of digital media has created new opportunities for citizens to participate in politics and to hold governments accountable. However, it has also created new challenges, such as the potential for echo chambers, and the need for governments to be responsive to citizen concerns. The challenge for e-democracy, therefore, is to ensure that the digital discourse contributes constructively to the functioning of the government and the decision-making processes, rather than becoming an echo chamber of opinions with little practical impact. As of the 2020s, e-democracy's landscape continues to evolve alongside advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and big data. These technologies promise to expand citizen participation further, enhance transparency, and boost the overall efficiency and responsiveness of democratic governance. The history of e-democracy exhibits significant progress, but it is also characterized by ongoing debates and challenges, such as the digital divide, data privacy, cybersecurity, and the impact of misinformation. As this journey continues, the emphasis remains on leveraging technology to enhance democratic processes and ensure all citizens' voices are heard and valued. E-democracy promotes wider access to information, and its inherent decentralization challenges censorship practices. It embodies elements of the internet's origins, including strong libertarian support for freedom of speech, widespread sharing culture, and the National Science Foundation's commercial use prohibition. The internet's capacity for mass communication, evident in newsgroups, chat rooms, and MUDs, surpasses traditional boundaries associated with broadcast media like newspapers or radio, as well as personal media such as letters or landline telephones. As the Internet represents a vast digital network supporting open standards, achieving widespread, cost-effective access to a diverse range of communication media and models is feasible. Practical issues pertaining to e-democracy include managing the agenda while encouraging meaningful participation and fostering enlightened understanding. Furthermore, efforts are evaluated based on their ability to ensure voting equality and promote inclusivity. The success or failure of e-democracy largely depends on its capability to accurately delineate each issue's relevant costs and benefits, identify their likelihood and significance, and align votes with this analysis. In addition, all internet forums, including Wikipedia, must address cybersecurity and protect sensitive data. Digital mobilization in social movements Occupy movement The Occupy movement, which proposed various demonstrations in response to the financial crisis of 2007–08, extensively utilized social networks. 15-M Movement Originating in Spain and subsequently spreading to other European countries, the 15-M Movement gave rise to proposals by the Partido X (X Party) in Spain. In 2016 and 2017, citizens involved in the movement together with the City Council of Barcelona developed a combined online and offline e-democracy project called Decidim, that self-describes as a "technopolitical network for participatory democracy", with the aim of implementing the hopes of participatory democracy raised by the movement. The project combines a free and open-source software (FOSS) software package together with a participatory political project and an organising community, "Metadecidim". Decidim participants refer to the software, political and organising components of the project as "technical", "political" and "technopolitical" levels, respectively. By 2023, Decidim estimated that 400 city and regional governments and civil society institutions were running Decidim instances. Arab Spring During the Arab Spring, uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East were spearheaded by online activists. Initially, pro-democracy movements harnessed digital media to challenge authoritarian regimes. These regimes, however, adapted and integrated social media into their counter-insurgency strategies over time. Digital media served as a critical tool in transforming localized and individual dissent into structured movements with a shared awareness of common grievances and opportunities for collective action. Egyptian Revolution The Egyptian Revolution began on 25 January 2011, prompted by mass protests in Cairo, Egypt, against the long reign of President Hosni Mubarak, high unemployment, governmental corruption, poverty, and societal oppression. The 18-day revolution gained momentum not through initial acts of violence or protests, but via a single Facebook page, which quickly attracted the attention of thousands and eventually millions of Egyptians, evolving into a global phenomenon. The Internet became a tool of empowerment for the protestors, facilitating participation in their government's democratization process. Protestors effectively utilized digital platforms to communicate, organize, and collaborate, generating real-time impact. In response to the regime's failed attempt to disrupt political online discussions by severing all internet access, Google and Twitter collaborated to create a system that allowed information to reach the public without internet access. The interactive nature of media during this revolution enhanced civic participation and played a significant role in shaping the political outcome of the revolution and the democratization of the entire nation. The Egyptian Revolution has been interpreted by some as a paradigm shift from a group-controlled system to one characterized by "networked individualism". This transformation is tied to the post-"triple revolution" of technology, consisting of three key developments. First, the shift towards social networks, second, the widespread propagation of the instantaneous internet, and third, the ubiquity of mobile phones. These elements significantly impacted change through the Internet, providing an alternative, unregulated sphere for idea formation and protests. For instance, the "6 April Youth Movement" in Egypt established their political group on Facebook and called for a national strike. Despite the subsequent suppression of this event, the Facebook group persisted, encouraging other activist groups to utilize online media. Moreover, the Internet served as a medium for building international connections, amplifying the impact of the revolt. The rapid transmission of information via Twitter hashtags, for example, made the uprising globally known. In particular, over three million tweets contained popular hashtags such as #Egypt and #sidibouzid, further facilitating the spread of knowledge and fostering change in Egypt. Kony 2012 The Kony 2012 video, released on 5 March 2012 by the non-profit organization Invisible Children, launched an online grassroots campaign aimed at locating and arresting Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Central Africa. The video's mission was to raise global awareness about Kony's activities, with Jason Russell, a founder of Invisible Children, emphasizing the necessity of public support to urge the government's continued search for Kony. The organization leveraged the extensive reach of social media and contemporary technology to spotlight Kony's crimes. In response to the campaign, on 21 March 2012, a resolution was introduced by 33 Senators denouncing "the crimes against humanity" perpetrated by Kony and the LRA. This resolution supported the US government's ongoing efforts to boost the capabilities of regional military forces for civilian protection and the pursuit of LRA commanders. It also advocated for cross-border initiatives to augment civilian protection and aid populations affected by the LRA. Co-sponsor Senator Lindsey Graham noted the significant impact of public attention driven by social media, stating that the YouTube sensation would "help the Congress be more aggressive and will do more to lead to his demise than all other action combined". India Against Corruption (2011–2012) The India Against Corruption (IAC) movement was an influential anti-corruption crusade in India, garnering substantial attention during the anti-corruption protests of 2011 and 2012. Its primary focus was the contention surrounding the proposed Jan Lokpal bill. IAC sought to galvanize the populace in their pursuit of a less corrupt Indian society. However, internal divisions within the IAC's central committee led to the movement's split. Arvind Kejriwal left to establish the Aam Aadmi Party, while Anna Hazare created the Jantantra Morcha. Long March (Pakistan) Long March is a socio-political movement in Pakistan initiated by Qadri after returning from a seven-year residence in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in December 2012. Qadri called for a "million-men" march in Islamabad to protest government corruption. The march commenced on 14 January 2013, with thousands pledging to participate in a sit-in until their demands were met. The march began in Lahore with about 25,000 participants. During a rally in front of the parliament, Qadri critiqued the legislators saying, "There is no Parliament; there is a group of looters, thieves and dacoits [bandits] ... Our lawmakers are the lawbreakers.". After four days of sit-in, Qadri and the government reached an agreement—termed the Islamabad Long March Declaration—which pledged electoral reforms and enhanced political transparency. Despite Qadri's call for a "million-men" march, the government estimated the sit-in participants in Islamabad to number around 50,000. Five Star Movement (Italy) The Five Star Movement (M5S), a prominent political party in Italy, has been utilizing online voting since 2012 to select its candidates for Italian and European elections. These votes are conducted through a web-based application called Rousseau, accessible to registered members of Beppe Grillo's blog. Within this platform, M5S users are able to discuss, approve, or reject legislative proposals. These proposals are then presented in Parliament by the M5S group. For instance, the M5S's electoral law and the selection of its presidential candidate were determined via online voting. Notably, the decision to abolish a law against immigrants was made by online voting among M5S members, in opposition to the views of Grillo and Casaleggio. M5S's alliance with the UK Independence Party was also determined by online voting, albeit with limited options for the choice of European Parliament group for M5S. These were Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD), European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), and "Stay independent" (Non-Inscrits). The possibility of joining the Greens/EFA group was discussed but not available at the time due to the group's prior rejection of M5S. When the Conte I Cabinet collapsed, a new coalition between the Democratic Party and M5S was endorsed after over 100,000 members voted online, with 79.3% supporting the new coalition. COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance and impact of e-democracy. In 2020, the advent of COVID-19 led countries worldwide to implement safety measures as recommended by public health officials. This abrupt societal shift constrained social movements, causing a temporary halt to certain political issues. Despite these limitations, individuals leveraged digital platforms to express their views, create visibility for social movements, and strive to instigate change and raise awareness through democracy in social media. As reported by news analysis firm The ASEAN Post, the pandemic-induced limitations on traditional democratic spaces such as public meetings have led Filipinos, among others, to resort to social media, digital media, and collaborative platforms for engaging in public affairs and practising "active citizenship" in the virtual domain. This shift has enabled active participation in social, written, or visual interaction and the rectification of misinformation in a virtual setting. Opportunities and challenges Potential impacts E-democracy has the potential to inspire greater community involvement in political processes and policy decisions, interlacing its growth with complex internal aspects such as political norms and public pressure. The manner in which it is implemented is also closely connected to the specific model of democracy employed. Consequently, e-democracy is profoundly influenced by a country's internal dynamics as well as the external drivers defined by standard innovation and diffusion theory. In the current age, where the internet and social networking dominate daily life, individuals are increasingly advocating for their public representatives to adopt practices similar to those in other states or countries concerning the online dissemination of government information. By making government data easily accessible and providing straightforward channels to communicate with government officials, e-democracy addresses the needs of modern society. E-democracy promotes more rapid and efficient dissemination of political information, encourages public debate, and boosts participation in decision-making processes. Social media platforms have emerged as tools of empowerment, particularly among younger individuals, stimulating their participation in electoral processes. These platforms also afford politicians opportunities for direct engagement with constituents. A notable example is the 2016 United States presidential elections, in which Donald Trump primarily used Twitter to communicate policy initiatives and goals. Similar practices have been observed among various global leaders, such as Justin Trudeau, Jair Bolsonaro, and Hassan Rouhani, who maintain active Twitter accounts. Some observers argue that the government's online publication of public information enhances its transparency, enabling more extensive public scrutiny, and consequently promoting a more equitable distribution of power within society. Jane Fountain, in her 2001 work Building the Virtual State, delves into the expansive reach of e-democracy and its interaction with traditional governmental structures. She offers a comprehensive model to understand how pre-existing norms, procedures, and rules within bureaucracies impact the adoption of new technological forms. Fountain suggests that this form of e-government, in its most radical manifestation, would necessitate a significant overhaul of the modern administrative state, with routine electronic consultations involving elected politicians, civil servants, pressure groups, and other stakeholders becoming standard practice at all stages of policy formulation. States where legislatures are controlled by the Republican Party, as well as those characterized by a high degree of legislative professionalization and active professional networks, have shown a greater propensity to embrace e-government and e-democracy. E-democracy provides numerous benefits, contributing to a more engaged public sphere. It encourages increased public participation by offering platforms for citizens to express their opinions through websites, emails, and other electronic communication channels, influencing planning and decision-making processes. This digital democracy model broadens the number and diversity of individuals who exercise their democratic rights by conveying their thoughts to decision-making bodies about various proposals and issues. Moreover, it cultivates a virtual public space, fostering interaction, discussion, and the exchange of ideas among citizens. E-democracy also promotes convenience, allowing citizens to participate at their own pace and comfort. Its digital nature enables it to reach vast audiences with relative ease and minimal cost. The system promotes interactive communication, encouraging dialogue between authorities and citizens. It also serves as an effective platform for disseminating large amounts of information, maintaining clarity and minimizing distortion. Challenges While e-democracy platforms, also known as digital democracy platforms, offer enhanced opportunities for exercising voting rights, they are also susceptible to disruption. Digital voting platforms, for example, have faced attacks aimed at influencing election outcomes. As Dobrygowski states, "cybersecurity threats to the integrity of both electoral mechanisms and government institutions are, quite uncomfortably, more intangible." While traditional paper ballots are often considered the most secure method for conducting elections, digital voting provides the convenience of electronic participation. However, the successful implementation of this system necessitates continual innovations and contributions from third parties. Ensuring digital inclusion To foster a robust digital democracy, it's imperative to promote digital inclusion that ensures all citizens, regardless of income, education, gender, religion, ethnicity, language, physical and mental health, have equal opportunities to participate in public policy formulation. During the 2020 elections, digital communications were utilized by various communities to cultivate a sense of inclusivity. Specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a surge in online political participation among the youth, demonstrated by the signing of online petitions and participation in digital protests. Even as youth participation in traditional politics dwindles, young people show significant support for pressure groups mobilized through social media. For instance, the Black Lives Matter movement gained widespread recognition on social media, enabling many young people to participate in meaningful ways, including online interactions and protests. Requirements E-Democracy is facilitated by its significance in fostering participation, promoting social inclusivity, displaying sensitivity to individual perspectives, and offering flexible means of engagement. The Internet endows a sense of relevance to participation by giving everyone a platform for their voices to be heard and articulated. It also facilitates a structure of social inclusivity through a broad array of websites, groups, and social networks, each representing diverse viewpoints and ideas. Individual needs are met by enabling the public and rapid expression of personal opinions. Furthermore, the Internet offers an exceptionally flexible environment for engagement; it is cost-effective and widely accessible. Through these attributes, e-democracy and the deployment of the Internet can play a pivotal role in societal change. Internet accessibility The progression of e-democracy is impeded by the digital divide, which separates those actively engaged in electronic communities from those who do not participate. Proponents of e-democracy often recommend governmental actions to bridge this digital gap. The divergence in e-governance and e-democracy between the developed and the developing world is largely due to the digital divide. Practical concerns include the digital divide that separates those with access from those without, and the opportunity cost associated with investments in e-democracy innovations. There also exists a degree of skepticism regarding the potential impact of online participation. Security and privacy The government has a responsibility to ensure that online communications are both secure and respectful of individuals' privacy. This aspect gains prominence when considering electronic voting. The complexity of electronic voting systems surpasses other digital transaction mechanisms, necessitating authentication measures that can counter ballot manipulation or its potential threat. These measures may encompass the use of smart cards, which authenticate a voter's identity while maintaining the confidentiality of the cast vote. Electronic voting in Estonia exemplifies a successful approach to addressing the privacy-identity dilemma inherent in internet voting systems. However, the ultimate goal should be to match the security and privacy standards of existing manual systems. Despite these advancements, recent research has indicated, through a SWOT analysis, that the risks of an e-government are related to data loss, privacy and security, and user adoption. Government responsiveness To encourage citizens to engage in online consultations and discussions, the government needs to be responsive and clearly demonstrate that public engagement influences policy outcomes. It's crucial for citizens to have the opportunity to contribute at a time and place that suits them and when their viewpoints will make a difference. The government should put structures in place to accommodate increased participation. Considering the role that intermediaries and representative organizations might play could be beneficial to ensure issues are debated in a manner that is democratic, inclusive, tolerant, and productive. To amplify the efficacy of existing legal rights allowing public access to information held by public authorities, citizens ought to be granted the right to productive public deliberation and moderation. Some researchers argue that many initiatives have been driven by technology rather than by the core values of government, which has resulted in weakened democracy. Participation and engagement Interaction modes E-democracy presents an opportunity to reconcile the conventional trade-off between the size of the group involved in democratic processes and the depth of will expression (refer to the Figure). Historically, broad group participation was facilitated via simple ballot voting, but the depth of will expression was confined to predefined options (those on the ballot). Depth of will expression was obtained by limiting participant numbers through representative democracy (refer to the Table). The social media Web 2.0 revolution has demonstrated the possibility of achieving both large group sizes and depth of will expression. However, expressions of will in social media are unstructured, making their interpretation challenging and often subjective (see Table). Novel information processing methods, including big data analytics and the semantic web, suggest potential ways to exploit these capabilities for future e-democracy implementations. Currently, e-democracy processes are facilitated by technologies such as electronic mailing lists, peer-to-peer networks, collaborative software, and apps like GovernEye, Countable, VoteSpotter, wikis, internet forums, and blogs. The examination of e-democracy encompasses its various stages including "information provision, deliberation, and participation in decision-making." This assessment also takes into account the different hierarchical levels of governance such as local communities, states/regions, nations, and the global stage. Further, the scope of involvement is also considered, which includes the participation of citizens/voters, the media, elected officials, political organizations, and governments. Therefore, e-democracy's evolution is influenced by such broad changes as increased interdependency, technological multimediation, partnership governance, and individualism. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, and Blogspot, are increasingly significant in democratic dialogues. The role of social media in e-democracy is an emerging field of study, along with technological developments such as argument maps and the semantic web. Another notable development is the combination of open social networking communication with structured communication from closed expert and/or policy-maker panels, such as through the modified Delphi method (HyperDelphi). This approach seeks to balance distributed knowledge and self-organized memories with critical control, responsibility, and decision-making in electronic democracy. Social networking serves as an entry point within the citizens' environment, engaging them on their terms. Proponents of e-government believe this helps the government act more in tune with its public. Examples of state usage include The Official Commonwealth of Virginia Homepage, where citizens can find Google tools and open social forums, considered significant steps towards the maturity of e-democracy. Community involvement Civic engagement encompasses three key aspects: understanding public affairs (political knowledge), trust in the political system (political trust), and involvement in governmental decision-making processes (political participation). The internet enhances civic engagement by creating a new medium for interaction with government institutions. Advocates of e-democracy propose that it can facilitate more active government engagement and inspire citizens to actively influence decisions that directly affect them. Numerous studies indicate an increased use of the internet for obtaining political information. From 1996 to 2002, the percentage of adults claiming that the internet played a significant role in their political choices rose from around 14 to 20 percent. In 2002, almost a quarter of the population stated that they had visited a website to research specific public policy issues. Research has indicated that people are more likely to visit websites that challenge their viewpoints rather than those that align with their own beliefs. Around 16 percent of the population has participated in online political activities such as joining campaigns, volunteering time, donating money, or participating in polls. A survey conducted by Philip N. Howard revealed that nearly two-thirds of the adult population in the United States has interacted with online political news, information, or other content over the past four election cycles. People tend to reference the websites of special interest groups more frequently than those of specific elected leaders, political candidates, political parties, nonpartisan groups, and local community groups. The vast informational capacity of the Internet empowers citizens to gain a deeper understanding of governmental and political affairs, while its interactive nature fosters new forms of communication with elected officials and public servants. By providing access to contact information, legislation, agendas, and policies, governments can enhance transparency, thereby potentially facilitating more informed participation both online and offline. As articulated by Matt Leighninger, the internet bolsters government by enhancing individual empowerment and reinforcing group agency. The internet avails vital information to citizens, empowering them to influence public policy more effectively. The utilization of online tools for organizing allows citizens to participate more easily in the government's policy-making process, leading to a surge in public engagement. Social media platforms foster networks of individuals whose online activities can shape the political process, including prompting politicians to intensify public appeal efforts in their campaigns. E-democracy offers a digital platform for public dialogue, enhancing the interaction between government and its residents. This form of online engagement enables the government to concentrate on key issues the community wishes to address. The underpinning philosophy is that every citizen should have the potential to influence their local governance. E-democracy aligns with local communities and provides an opportunity for any willing citizen to make a contribution. The essence of an effective e-democracy lies not just in citizen contribution to government activities, but in promoting mutual communication and collaboration among citizens for the improvement of their own communities. E-democracy utilizes information and communication technologies (ICT) to bolster the democratic processes of decision-making. These technologies play a pivotal role in informing and organizing citizens in different avenues of civic participation. Moreover, ICTs enhance the active engagement of citizens, and foster collaboration among stakeholders for policy formation within political processes across all stages of governance. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) identifies three key aspects regarding the role of ICTs in fostering civic engagement. The first aspect is timing, with most civic engagement activities occurring during the agenda-setting phase of a cycle. The second factor is adaptation, which refers to how ICTs evolve to facilitate increased civic participation. The final aspect is integration, representing how emerging ICTs blend new and traditional methods to maximize civic engagement. ICT fosters the possibility of a government that is both more democratic and better informed by facilitating open online collaborations between professionals and the public. The responsibility of collecting information and making decisions is shared between those possessing technological expertise and the traditionally recognized decision-makers. This broadened public involvement in the exchange of ideas and policies results in more democratic decision-making. Furthermore, ICT enhances the notion of pluralism within a democracy, introducing fresh issues and viewpoints. Ordinary citizens have the opportunity to become creators of political content and commentary, for instance, by establishing individual blogs and websites. Collaborative efforts in the online political sphere, similar to ABC News' Campaign Watchdog initiative, allow citizens to report any rule violations committed by any political party during elections. In the 2000 United States presidential race, candidates frequently utilized their websites to not only encourage their supporters to vote but to motivate their friends to vote as well. This dual-process approach—urging an individual to vote and then to prompt their friends to vote—was just beginning to emerge during that time. Today, political participation through various social media platforms is typical, and civic involvement via online forums is common. Through the use of ICTs, individuals interested in politics have the ability to become more engaged. Youth involvement In previous years, individuals belonging to Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z, typically encompassing those aged 35 and below as of the mid-2000s, have been noted for their relative disengagement from political activities. The implementation of electronic democracy has been proposed as a potential solution to foster increased voter turnout, democratic participation, and political literacy among these younger demographics. E-citizenship Youth e-citizenship presents a dichotomy between two predominant approaches: management and autonomy. The strategy of "targeting" younger individuals, prompting them to "play their part," can be interpreted as either an incentive for youth activism or a mechanism to regulate it. Autonomous e-citizens argue that despite their relative inexperience, young people should have the right to voice their perspectives on issues that they personally consider important. Conversely, proponents of managed e-citizenship view youth as nascent citizens transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and hence not yet fully equipped to engage in political discourse without proper guidance. Another significant concern is the role of the Internet, with advocates of managed e-citizenship arguing that young people may be especially susceptible to misinformation or manipulation online. This discord manifests as two perspectives on democracy: one that sees democracy as an established and reasonably just system, where young people should be motivated to participate, and another that views democracy as a political and cultural goal best achieved through networks where young people interact. What might initially appear as mere differences in communication styles ultimately reveals divergent strategies for accessing and influencing power. In Scotland The Highland Youth Voice, an initiative in Scotland, is an exemplar of efforts to bolster democratic participation, particularly through digital means. Despite an increasing emphasis on the youth demographic in UK governmental policy and issues, their engagement and interest have been waning. During the 2001 elections to the Westminster Parliament in the UK, voter turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds was estimated to be a mere 40%. This contrasts starkly with the fact that over 80% of 16- to 24-year-olds have accessed the internet at some point. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasizes the importance of educating young individuals as citizens of their respective nations. It advocates for the promotion of active political participation, which they can shape through robust debate and communication. The Highland Youth Voice strives to boost youth participation by understanding their governmental needs, perspectives, experiences, and aspirations. It provides young Scots, aged 14 to 18, an opportunity to influence decision-makers in the Highlands. This body, consisting of approximately 100 elected members, represents youth voices. Elections occur biennially and candidates are chosen directly from schools and youth forums. The Highland Youth Voice website serves as a pivotal platform where members can discuss issues pertinent to them, partake in online policy debates, and experience a model of e-democracy through simplified online voting. Thus, the website encompasses three key features, forming an online forum that enables youth self-education, participation in policy discourse, and engagement in the e-democracy process. Civil society's role Civil society organizations have a pivotal role in democracies, as highlighted by theorists such as Alexis de Tocqueville, acting as platforms for citizens to gain knowledge about public affairs and as sources of power beyond the state's reach. According to Hans Klein, a public policy researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, there exist several obstacles to participation in these forums, including logistical challenges of physical meetings. Klein's study of a civic association in the northeastern US revealed that electronic communication significantly boosted the organization's capacity to achieve its objectives. Given the relatively low cost of exchanging information over the Internet and its potential for wide reach, the medium has become an attractive venue for disseminating political information, especially among interest groups and parties operating on smaller budgets.'" For example, environmental or social interest groups might leverage the Internet as a cost-effective mechanism to raise awareness around their causes. Unlike traditional media outlets, like television or newspapers, which often necessitate substantial financial investments, the Internet provides an affordable and extensive platform for information dissemination. As such, the Internet could potentially supplant certain traditional modes of political communication, such as telephone, television, newspapers, and radio. Consequently, civil society has been increasingly integrating into the online realm. Civic society encompasses various types of associations. The term interest group is typically used to refer to formal organizations focused on specific social groups, economic sectors like trade unions, business and professional associations, or specific issues such as abortion, gun control, or the environment. Many of these traditional interest groups have well-established organizational structures and formal membership rules, primarily oriented towards influencing government and policy-making processes. Transnational advocacy networks assemble loose coalitions of these organizations under common umbrella organizations that cross national borders. Innovative tools are increasingly being developed to empower bloggers, webmasters, and social media owners. These aim to transition from the Internet's strictly informational use to its application as a medium for social organization, independent of top-down initiatives. For instance, the concept of Calls to action is a novel approach that enables webmasters to inspire their audience into action without the need for explicit leadership. This trend is global, with countries like India cultivating an active blogosphere that encourages internet users to express their perspectives and opinions. The Internet serves multifaceted roles for these organizations. It functions as a platform for lobbying elected officials, public representatives, and policy elites; networking with affiliated associations and groups; mobilizing organizers, activists, and members through action alerts, newsletters, and emails; raising funds and recruiting support; and conveying their messages to the public via traditional news media channels. Deliberative democracy The Internet holds a pivotal role in deliberative democracy, a model that underscores dialogue, open discussion, and access to diverse perspectives in decision-making. It provides an interactive platform and functions as a vital instrument for research within the deliberative process. The Internet facilitates the exchange of ideas through a myriad of platforms such as websites, blogs, and social networking sites like Twitter, all of which champion freedom of expression.[citation needed] It allows for easily accessible and cost-effective information, paving the way for change. One of the intrinsic attributes of the Internet is its unregulated nature, offering a platform for all viewpoints, regardless of their accuracy. The autonomy granted by the Internet can foster and advocate change, a critical factor in e-democracy. A notable development in the application of e-democracy in the deliberative process is the California Report Card. This tool was created by the Data and Democracy Initiative of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom. Launched in January 2014, the California Report Card is a web application optimized for mobile use, aimed at facilitating online deliberative democracy. The application features a brief opinion poll on six pertinent issues, after which participants are invited to join an online "café". In this space, they are grouped with users sharing similar views through Principal Component Analysis, and are encouraged to participate in the deliberative process by suggesting new political issues and rating the suggestions of other participants. The design of the California Report Card is intended to minimize the influence of private agendas on the discussion. Openforum.com.au also exemplifies eDemocracy. This non-profit Australian project facilitates high-level policy discussions, drawing participants such as politicians, senior public servants, academics, business professionals, and other influential stakeholders. The Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN Act), presented as an alternative to SOPA and PIPA, garners the support of major companies like Google and Facebook. Its website, Keep The Web Open, not only provides full access to the bill but also incorporates public input—over 150 modifications have been made through user contributions. The peer-to-patent project allows public participation in the patent review process by providing research and 'prior art' publications for patent examiners to assess the novelty of an invention. In this process, the community nominates ten pieces of prior art to be reviewed by the patent examiner. This not only enables direct communication between the public and the patent examiner but also creates a structured environment that prompts participants to provide relevant information to aid in decision-making. By allowing experts and the general public to collaborate in finding solutions, the project aims to enhance the efficacy of the decision-making process. It offers a platform for citizens to participate and express their ideas beyond merely checking boxes that limit their opinions to predefined options. Voting and polling One significant challenge in implementing e-democracy is ensuring the security of internet-voting systems. The potential interference from viruses and malware, which could alter or inhibit citizens' votes on critical issues, hinders the widespread adoption of e-democracy as long as such cybersecurity threats persist. E-voting presents several practical challenges that can affect its legitimacy in elections. For instance, electronic voting machines can be vulnerable to physical interference, as they are often left unattended prior to elections, making them susceptible to tampering. This issue led to a decision by the Netherlands in 2017 to count election votes manually. Furthermore, 'Direct Recording Electronic' (DRE) systems, used in numerous US states, are quickly becoming outdated and prone to faults. A study by USENIX discovered that certain DREs in New Jersey inaccurately counted votes, potentially casting votes for unintended candidates without voters' knowledge. The study found these inconsistencies to be widespread with that specific machine. Despite the potential of electronic voting to increase voter turnout, the absence of a paper trail in DREs can lead to untraceable errors, which could undermine its application in digital democracy. Diminished participation in democracy may stem from the proliferation of polls and surveys, potentially leading to a condition known as survey fatigue. Government openness and accessibility Through Listserv's, RSS feeds, mobile messaging, micro-blogging services and blogs, government and its agencies can disseminate information to citizens who share common interests and concerns. For instance, many government representatives, including Rhode Island State Treasurer Frank T. Caprio, have begun to utilize Twitter as an easy medium for communication. Several non-governmental websites, like transparent.gov.com, and USA.gov, have developed cross-jurisdiction, customer-focused applications that extract information from thousands of governmental organizations into a unified system, making it easier for citizens to access information. E-democracy has led to a simplified process and access to government information for public-sector agencies and citizens. For example, the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles simplified the process of certifying driver records for admission in county court proceedings. Indiana became the first state to allow government records to be digitally signed, legally certified and delivered electronically using Electronic Postmark technology. The internet has increased government accessibility to news, policies, and contacts in the 21st century. In 2000, only two percent of government sites offered three or more services online; in 2007, that figure was 58 percent. Also, in 2007, 89 percent of government sites allowed the public to email a public official directly rather than merely emailing the webmaster (West, 2007)"(Issuu). Controversies and concern Opposition Information and communications technologies can be utilized for both democratic and anti-democratic purposes. For instance, digital technology can be used to promote both coercive control and active participation. The vision of anti-democratic use of technology is exemplified in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Critiques associated with direct democracy are also considered applicable to e-democracy. This includes the potential for direct governance to cause the polarization of opinions, populism, and demagoguery. Cybersecurity The current inability to protect internet traffic from interference and manipulation has significantly limited the potential of e-democracy for decision-making. As a result, most experts express opposition to the use of the internet for widespread voting. Internet censorship In countries with severe government censorship, the full potential of e-democracy might not be realized. Internet clampdowns often occur during extensive political protests. For instance, the series of internet blackouts in the Middle East in 2011, termed as the "Arab Net Crackdown", provides a significant example. Governments in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Iran, and Yemen have all implemented total internet censorship in response to the numerous pro-democracy demonstrations within their respective nations. These lockdowns were primarily instituted to prevent the dissemination of cell phone videos that featured images of government violence against protesters. Social media manipulation Joshua A. Tucker and his colleagues critique e-democracy, pointing out that the adaptability and openness of social media may allow political entities to manipulate it for their own ends. They suggest that authorities could use social media to spread authoritarian practices in several ways. Firstly, by intimidating opponents, monitoring private conversations, and even jailing those who voice undesirable opinions. Secondly, by flooding online spaces with pro-regime messages, thereby diverting and occupying these platforms. Thirdly, by disrupting signal access to hinder the flow of information. Lastly, by banning globalized platforms and websites. Populism concerns A study that interviewed elected officials in Austria's parliament revealed a broad and strong opposition to e-democracy. These officials held the view that citizens, generally uninformed, should limit their political engagement to voting. The task of sharing opinions and ideas, they contended, belonged solely to elected representatives. Contrary to this view, theories of epistemic democracy suggest that greater public engagement contributes to the aggregation of knowledge and intelligence. This active participation, proponents argue, enables democracies to better discern the truth. Stop Online Piracy Act The introduction of H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), in the United States House of Representatives, was perceived by many internet users as an attack on internet democracy. A contributor to the Huffington Post argued that defeating SOPA was crucial for the preservation of democracy and freedom of speech. Significantly, SOPA was indefinitely postponed following widespread protests, which included a site blackout by popular websites like Wikipedia on 18 January 2012. A comparable event occurred in India towards the end of 2011, when the country's Communication and IT Minister Kapil Sibal suggested pre-screening content for offensive material before its publication on the internet, with no clear mechanism for appeal. Subsequent reports, however, quote Sibal as stating that there would be no restrictions on internet use. Suitable government models Representative democracy A radical shift from a representative government to an internet-mediated direct democracy is not considered likely. Nonetheless, proponents suggest that a "hybrid model" which leverages the internet for enhanced governmental transparency and greater community involvement in decision-making could be forthcoming. The selection of committees, local town and city decisions, and other people-centric decisions could be more readily facilitated through this approach. This doesn't indicate a shift in the principles of democracy but rather an adaptation in the tools utilized to uphold them. E-democracy would not serve as a means to enact direct democracy, but rather as a tool to enable a more participatory form of democracy as it exists currently. Electronic direct democracy Supporters of e-democracy often foresee a transition from a representative democracy to a direct democracy, facilitated by technology, viewing this transition as an ultimate goal of e-democracy. In an electronic direct democracy (EDD) – also referred to as open source governance or collaborative e-democracy – citizens are directly involved in the legislative function through electronic means. They vote electronically on legislation, propose new legislation, and recall representatives, if any are retained. Technology supporting electronic direct democracy Technology to support electronic direct democracy (EDD) has been researched and developed at the Florida Institute of Technology, where it has been applied within student organizations. Many other software development projects are currently underway, along with numerous supportive and related projects. Several of these projects are now collaborating on a cross-platform architecture within the framework of the Meta-government project. EDD as a system is not fully implemented in a political government anywhere in the world, although several initiatives are currently forming. In the United States, businessman and politician Ross Perot was a prominent supporter of EDD, advocating for "electronic town halls" during his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. Switzerland, already partially governed by direct democracy, is making progress towards such a system. Senator On-Line, an Australian political party established in 2007, proposes to institute an EDD system so that Australians can decide which way the senators vote on each and every bill. A similar initiative was formed 2002 in Sweden where the party Direktdemokraterna, running for the Parliament, offered its members the power to decide the actions of the party over all or some areas of decision, or to use a proxy with immediate recall for one or several areas. Liquid democracy Liquid democracy, or direct democracy incorporating a delegable proxy, enables citizens to appoint a proxy for voting on their behalf, while retaining the ability to cast their own vote on legislation. This voting and proxy assignment could be conducted electronically. Extending this concept, proxies could establish proxy chains; for instance, if citizen A appoints citizen B, and B appoints citizen C, and only C votes on a proposed bill, C's vote will represent all three of them. Citizens could also rank their proxies by preference, meaning that if their primary proxy does not vote, their vote could be cast by their second-choice proxy. Wikidemocracy One form of e-democracy that has been proposed is "wikidemocracy", where the codex of laws in a government legislature could be editable via a wiki, similar to Wikipedia. In 2012, J Manuel Feliz-Teixeira suggested that the resources necessary for implementing wikidemocracy were already accessible. He envisages a system in which citizens can participate in legislative, executive, and judiciary roles via a wiki-system. Every citizen would have free access to this wiki and a personal ID to make policy reforms continuously until the end of December, when all votes would be tallied. Perceived benefits of wikidemocracy include a cost-free system that eliminates elections and the need for parliament or representatives, as citizens would directly represent themselves, and the ease of expressing one's opinion. However, there are several potential obstacles and disagreements. The digital divide and educational inequality could hinder the full potential of a wikidemocracy. Similarly, differing rates of technological adoption mean that some people might readily accept new methods, while others reject or are slow to adapt. Security is also a concern; we would need to trust that the system administrators would ensure a high level of integrity to safeguard votes in the public domain. Peter Levine concurs that wikidemocracy could increase discussion on political and moral issues but disagrees with Feliz-Teixeira, arguing that representatives and formal governmental structures would still be needed. The term "wikidemocracy" is also used to refer to more specific instances of e-democracy. For example, in August 2011 in Argentina, the voting records from the presidential election were made available to the public in an online format for scrutiny. More broadly, the term can refer to the democratic values and environments facilitated by wikis. In 2011, a group in Finland explored the concept of wikidemocracy by creating an online "shadow government program". This initiative was essentially a compilation of the political views and goals of various Finnish groups, assembled on a wiki. Egora Egora, also known as "intelligent democracy", is a free software application developed for political opinion formation and decision-making. It is filed under the copyleft licensing system. The name "Egora" is a blend of "electronic" and "agora", a term from Ancient Greek denoting the central public space in city-states (polis). The ancient agora was the hub of public life, facilitating social interactions, business transactions, and discussions. Drawing from this Ancient Greek concept, Egora aims to foster a new, rational, efficient, and incorruptible form of democratic organization. It allows users to form their own political philosophies from diverse ideas, ascertain the most popular ideas among the public, organize meetings to scrutinize and debate these ideas, and employ a simple algorithm to identify true representatives of the public will. In popular media The theme of e-democracy has frequently appeared in science fiction. Works such as David's Sling by Marc Stiegler and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card notably predicted forms of the internet before it actually came into existence. These early conceptualizations of the internet, and their implications for democracy, served as major plot drivers in these stories. David's Sling In David's Sling, Marc Stiegler presents e-democracy as a strategy leveraged by a team of hackers to construct a computer-controlled smart weapon. They utilize an online debate platform, the Information Decision Duel, where two parties delve deeply into the intricacies of their arguments, dissecting the pros and cons before a neutral referee selects the more convincing side. This fictional portrayal of an internet-like system for public discourse echoes real-world aspirations for e-democracy, underscoring thorough issue analysis, technological enablement, and transparency. The book's dedication, "To those who never stop seeking the third alternatives," epitomizes this emphasis on comprehensive issue scrutiny. Ender's Game Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game also explores e-democracy, with the internet portrayed as a powerful platform for political discourse and social change. Two of the characters, siblings Valentine and Peter, use this platform to anonymously share their political views, gaining considerable influence. Their activities lead to a significant political shift, even though they are just children posing as adults. This highlights the issue of true identity within online participation and raises questions about the potential for manipulation in e-democracy. Other portrayals E-democracy has also been depicted in: The Evitable Conflict by Isaac Asimov: Machines manage the economy for common welfare and make all key societal decisions. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein: A sentient computer assists Lunar colonists in their rebellion against Earth, with significant decisions made through public electronic voting. Distraction by Bruce Sterling: The novel explores potential perils of e-democracy in a future United States heavily influenced by the internet and electronic voting. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow: The future society in this work practices digital direct democracy with a reputation-based currency called "Whuffie". Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge: The novel imagines societal changes due to technological advancements, including more participatory democracy through continuous public polling and consensus-building tools. The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds: The narrative centers on a future society where an artificial intelligence, the Prefect, administers a democratic system. These works provide varied perspectives on the potential benefits and challenges of e-democracy. See also Collaborative e-democracy Collaborative governance Decidim, a "technopolitical network for participatory democracy" Democracy experiment Democratization of technology E2D International E-Government E-participation Electronic civil disobedience Electronic Democracy Party, a political party in Turkey Emergent democracy eRulemaking Hacktivism Index of Internet-related articles Internet activism Isocracy IserveU, a Canadian-based online voting platform Media democracy Online consultation Online deliberation Online Party of Canada, a political party in Canada Open politics Open source governance Outline of the Internet Parliamentary informatics ParoleWatch Party of Internet Democracy, a political party in Hungary Participation Platform cooperative Public Whip Second Superpower Smart mob Spatial Citizenship Technocracy Technology and society TheyWorkForYou References External links Council of Europe's work on e-Democracy - Including the work of the Ad Hoc Committee on e-Democracy IWG established in 2006 Edc.unigue.ch - Academic research centre on electronic democracy. Directed by Alexander H. Trechsel, e-DC is a joint-venture between the University of Geneva's c2d, the European University Institute in Florence and the Oxford University's OII. Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet Democras ICEGOV - International Conference on Electronic Governance NYTimes Op-Ed Digital Democracy UK - launched to elected local councillors across the UK in 2013 to enable them to work alongside local residents in the democratic determination of community priorities Transparent Government Balbis Platform for digital democracy which enables creation of proposals, debates and voting. The Blueprint of E-Democracy Egora Politics and technology Types of democracy

Nordic model

The Nordic model comprises the economic and social policies as well as typical cultural practices common in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). This includes a comprehensive welfare state and multi-level collective bargaining based on the economic foundations of social corporatism, and a commitment to private ownership within a market-based mixed economywith Norway being a partial exception due to a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms. Although there are significant differences among the Nordic countries, they all have some common traits. The three Scandinavian countries are constitutional monarchies, while Finland and Iceland have been republics since the 20th century. All the Nordic countries are however described as being highly democratic and all have a unicameral legislature and use proportional representation in their electoral systems. They all support a universalist welfare state aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy and promoting social mobility, with a sizable percentage of the population employed by the public sector (roughly 30% of the work force in areas such as healthcare, education, and government), and a corporatist system with a high percentage of the workforce unionized and involving a tripartite arrangement, where representatives of labour and employers negotiate wages and labour market policy is mediated by the government. As of 2020, all of the Nordic countries rank highly on the inequality-adjusted HDI and the Global Peace Index as well as being ranked in the top 10 on the World Happiness Report. The Nordic model was originally developed in the 1930s under the leadership of social democrats, although centrist and right-wing political parties, as well as labour unions, also contributed to the Nordic model's development. The Nordic model began to gain attention after World War II and has transformed in some ways over the last few decades, including increased deregulation and expanding privatization of public services. However, it is still distinguished from other models by the strong emphasis on public services and social investment. Overview and aspects The Nordic model has been characterized as follows: An elaborate social safety net, in addition to public services such as free education and universal healthcare in a largely tax-funded system. Strong property rights, contract enforcement and overall ease of doing business. Public pension plans. High levels of democracy as seen in the Freedom in the World survey and Democracy Index. Free trade combined with collective risk sharing (welfare social programmes and labour market institutions) which has provided a form of protection against the risks associated with economic openness. Little product market regulation. Nordic countries rank very high in product market freedom according to OECD rankings. Low levels of corruption. In Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden were ranked among the top 10 least corrupt of the 180 countries evaluated. A partnership between employers, trade unions and the government, whereby these social partners negotiate the terms to regulating the workplace amongst themselves, rather than the terms being imposed by law. Sweden has decentralised wage co-ordination while Finland is ranked the least flexible. The changing economic conditions have given rise to fear among workers as well as resistance by trade unions in regards to reforms. High trade union density and collective bargaining coverage. In 2019, trade union density was 90.7% in Iceland, 67.0% in Denmark, 65.2% in Sweden, 58.8% in Finland, and 50.4% in Norway; in comparison, trade union density was 16.3% in Germany and 9.9% in the United States. Additionally, in 2018, collective bargaining coverage was 90% in Iceland, 88.8% in Finland (2017), 88% in Sweden, 82% in Denmark, and 69% in Norway; in comparison collective bargaining coverage was 54% in Germany and 11.7% in the United States. The lower union density in Norway is mainly explained by the absence of a Ghent system since 1938. In contrast, Denmark, Finland and Sweden all have union-run unemployment funds. The Nordic countries received the highest ranking for protecting workers rights on the International Trade Union Confederation 2014 Global Rights Index, with Denmark being the only nation to receive a perfect score. Very high public spending, with Sweden at 56.6% of GDP, Denmark at 51.7%, and Finland at 48.6%. Public expenditure for health and education is significantly higher in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in comparison to the OECD average. Overall tax burdens as a percentage of GDP are high, with Denmark at 45.9% and both Finland and Sweden at 44.1%. The Nordic countries have relatively flat tax rates, meaning that even those with medium and low incomes are taxed at relatively high levels. The United Nations World Happiness Reports show that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe. The Nordics ranked highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption. The Nordic countries place in the top 10 of the World Happiness Report 2018, with Finland and Norway taking the top spots. Economic system The Nordic model is underpinned by a mixed-market capitalist economic system that features high degrees of private ownership, with the exception of Norway which includes a large number of state-owned enterprises and state ownership in publicly listed firms. The Nordic model is described as a system of competitive capitalism combined with a large percentage of the population employed by the public sector, which amounts to roughly 30% of the work force, in areas such as healthcare and higher education. In Norway, Finland, and Sweden, many companies and/or industries are state-run or state-owned like utilities, mail, rail transport, airlines, electrical power industry, fossil fuels, chemical industry, steel mill, electronics industry, machine industry, aerospace manufacturer, shipbuilding, and the arms industry. In 2013, The Economist described its countries as "stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies", while also looking for ways to temper capitalism's harsher effects and declared that the Nordic countries "are probably the best-governed in the world." Some economists have referred to the Nordic economic model as a form of "cuddly capitalism", with low levels of inequality, generous welfare states, and reduced concentration of top incomes, contrasting it with the more "cut-throat capitalism" of the United States, which has high levels of inequality and a larger concentration of top incomes, among others social inequalities. As a result of the Sweden financial crisis of 1990–1994, Sweden implemented economic reforms that were focused on deregulation and the strengthening of competition laws. Despite this however, Sweden still has the highest government spending-to-GDP ratio of all the Nordic countries, it retains national-level sectoral bargaining unlike Denmark and Iceland, with over 650 national-level bargaining agreements, it retains the Ghent system unlike Norway and Iceland and consequently has the second-highest rate of unionization in the world. Despite being one of the most equal OECD nations, from 1985 to the 2010s Sweden saw the largest growth in income inequality among OECD economies. Other effects of the 1990s reforms was the substantial growth of mutual fund savings, which largely began with the government subsidizing mutual fund savings through the so-called Allemansfonder program in the 1980s; today 4 out of 5 people aged 18–74 have fund savings. Norway's particularities The state of Norway has ownership stakes in many of the country's largest publicly listed companies, owning 37% of the Oslo stock market and operating the country's largest non-listed companies, including Equinor and Statkraft. In January 2013, The Economist reported that "after the second world war the government nationalised all German business interests in Norway and ended up owning 44% of Norsk Hydro's shares. The formula of controlling business through shares rather than regulation seemed to work well, so the government used it wherever possible. 'We invented the Chinese way of doing things before the Chinese', says Torger Reve of the Norwegian Business School." The government also operates a sovereign wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund of Norway, whose partial objective is to prepare Norway for a post-oil future but "unusually among oil-producing nations, it is also a big advocate of human rightsand a powerful one, thanks to its control of the Nobel peace prize." Norway is the only major economy in the north of Europe where younger generations are getting richer, with a 13% increase in disposable income income for 2018, bucking the trend seen in other european-northern nations of Millennials becoming poorer than the generations which came before. Social democracy Social democrats have played a pivotal role in shaping the Nordic model, with policies enacted by social democrats being pivotal in fostering the social cohesion in the Nordic countries. Among political scientists and sociologists, the term social democracy has become widespread to describe the Nordic model due to the influence of social democratic party governance in Sweden and Norway, in contrast to other classifications such as liberal or Christian democratic. According to sociologist Lane Kenworthy, the meaning of social democracy in this context refers to a variant of capitalism based on the predominance of private property and market allocation mechanisms alongside a set of policies for promoting economic security and opportunity within the framework of a capitalist economy as opposed to a political ideology that aims to replace capitalism. While many countries have been categorized as social democratic, the Nordic countries have been the only ones to be constantly categorized as such. In a review by Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser of works about the different models of welfare states, apart from Belgium and the Netherlands, categorized as "medium-high socialism", the Scandinavian countries analyzed (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) were the only ones to be categorized by sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen as "high socialism", which is defined as socialist attributes and values (equality and universalism) and the social democratic model, which is characterized by "a high level of decommodification and a low degree of stratification. Social policies are perceived as 'politics against the market.'" They summarized the social democratic model as being based on "the principle of universalism, granting access to benefits and services based on citizenship. Such a welfare state is said to provide a relatively high degree of autonomy, limiting the reliance on family and market." According to Johan Strang, since the 1990s, politicians, researchers and the media have shifted to explaining the Nordic model with cultural rather than political factors. These cultural explanations benefit neoliberalism, whose rise this cultural phenomenon coincided with. By the 2010s, politics has been re-entering the conversation on the Nordic model. Lutheran influence Some academics have theorized that Lutheranism, the dominant traditional religion of the Nordic countries, had an effect on the development of social democracy there. Schröder posits that Lutheranism promoted the idea of a nationwide community of believers and led to increased state involvement in economic and social life, allowing for nationwide welfare solidarity and economic co-ordination. Esa Mangeloja says that the revival movements helped to pave the way for the modern Finnish welfare state. During that process, the church lost some of its most important social responsibilities (health care, education, and social work) as these tasks were assumed by the secular Finnish state. Pauli Kettunen presents the Nordic model as the outcome of a sort of mythical "Lutheran peasant enlightenment", portraying the Nordic model as the result of a sort of "secularized Lutheranism"; however, mainstream academic discourse on the subject focuses on "historical specificity", with the centralized structure of the Lutheran church being but one aspect of the cultural values and state structures that led to the development of the welfare state in Scandinavia. Labour market policy The Nordic countries share active labour market policies as part of a social corporatist economic model intended to reduce conflict between labour and the interests of capital. This corporatist system is most extensive in Norway and Sweden, where employer federations and labour representatives bargain at the national level mediated by the government. Labour market interventions are aimed at providing job retraining and relocation. The Nordic labour market is flexible, with laws making it easy for employers to hire and shed workers or introduce labour-saving technology. To mitigate the negative effect on workers, the government labour market policies are designed to provide generous social welfare, job retraining and relocation services to limit any conflicts between capital and labour that might arise from this process. Nordic welfare model The Nordic welfare model refers to the welfare policies of the Nordic countries, which also tie into their labour market policies. The Nordic model of welfare is distinguished from other types of welfare states by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian, and extensive benefit levels, the large magnitude of income redistribution and liberal use of expansionary fiscal policy. While there are differences among the Nordic countries, they all share a broad commitment to social cohesion, a universal nature of welfare provision in order to safeguard individualism by providing protection for vulnerable individuals and groups in society, and maximising public participation in social decision-making. It is characterized by flexibility and openness to innovation in the provision of welfare. The Nordic welfare systems are mainly funded through taxation. Despite the common values, the Nordic countries take different approaches to the practical administration of the welfare state. Denmark features a high degree of private sector provision of public services and welfare, alongside an assimilation immigration policy. Iceland's welfare model is based on a "welfare-to-work" (see workfare) model while part of Finland's welfare state includes the voluntary sector playing a significant role in providing care for the elderly. Norway relies most extensively on public provision of welfare. Gender equality When it comes to gender equality, the Nordic countries hold one of the smallest gaps in gender employment inequality of all OECD countries, with less than 8 points in all Nordic countries according to International Labour Organization standards. They have been at the front of the implementation of policies that promote gender equality; the Scandinavian governments were some of the first to make it unlawful for companies to dismiss women on grounds of marriage or motherhood. Mothers in Nordic countries are more likely to be working mothers than in any other region and families enjoy pioneering legislation on parental leave policies that compensate parents for moving from work to home to care for their child, including fathers. Although the specifics of gender equality policies in regards to the work place vary from country to country, there is a widespread focus in Nordic countries to highlight "continuous full-time employment" for both men and women as well as single parents as they fully recognize that some of the most salient gender gaps arise from parenthood. Aside from receiving incentives to take shareable parental leave, Nordic families benefit from subsidized early childhood education and care and activities for out-of-school hours for those children that have enrolled in full-time education. The Nordic countries have been at the forefront of championing gender equality and this has been historically shown by substantial increases in women's employment. Between 1965 and 1990, Sweden's employment rate for women in working-age (15–64) went from 52.8% to 81.0%. In 2016, nearly three out of every four women in working-age in the Nordic countries were taking part in paid work. Nevertheless, women are still the main users of the shareable parental leave (fathers use less than 30% of their paid parental-leave-days), foreign women are being subjected to under-representation, and Finland still holds a notable gender pay-gap; the average woman's salary is 83% of that of a man, not accounting for confounding factors such as career choice. Poverty reduction The Nordic model has been successful at significantly reducing poverty. In 2011, poverty rates before taking into account the effects of taxes and transfers stood at 24.7% in Denmark, 31.9% in Finland, 21.6% in Iceland, 25.6% in Norway, and 26.5% in Sweden. After accounting for taxes and transfers, the poverty rates for the same year became 6%, 7.5%, 5.7%, 7.7% and 9.7% respectively, for an average reduction of 18.7 p.p. Compared to the United States, which has a poverty level pre-tax of 28.3% and post-tax of 17.4% for a reduction of 10.9 p.p., the effects of tax and transfers on poverty in all the Nordic countries are substantially bigger. In comparison to France (27 p.p. reduction) and Germany (24.2 p.p. reduction), the taxes and transfers in the Nordic countries are smaller on average. History The term 'peasant republic' is sometimes applied to certain communities in Scandinavia during the Viking Age and High Middle Ages, especially in Sweden, where royal power seems to have been initially somewhat weak, and in areas of modern day Sweden that were not under the rule of the Swedish king yet, as well as in Iceland where the Icelandic Commonwealth serves as an example of an unusually large and sophisticated peasant republic building on the same democratic traditions. Some historians have also argued that Gotland was a peasant republic before the attack by the Danes in 1361. Central for the old Scandinavian democratic traditions was the assemblies called the Thing or Moot. The Nordic model traces its foundation to the "grand compromise" between workers and employers spearheaded by farmer and worker parties in the 1930s. Following a long period of economic crisis and class struggle, the "grand compromise" served as the foundation for the post-World War II Nordic model of welfare and labour market organization. The key characteristics of the Nordic model were the centralized coordination of wage negotiation between employers and labour organizations, termed a social partnership, as well as providing a peaceful means to address class conflict between capital and labour. Magnus Bergli Rasmussen has challenged that farmers played an important role in ushering Nordic welfare states. A 2022 study by him found that farmers had strong incentives to resist welfare state expansion and farmer MPs consistently opposed generous welfare policies. Although often linked to social democratic governance, the Nordic model's parentage also stems from a mixture of mainly social democratic, centrist, and right-wing political parties, especially in Finland and Iceland, along with the social trust that emerged from the "great compromise" between capital and labour. The influence of each of these factors on each Nordic country varied as social democratic parties played a larger role in the formation of the Nordic model in Sweden and Norway, whereas in Iceland and Finland, right-wing political parties played a much more significant role in shaping their countries' social models. However, even in Iceland and Finland, strong labour unions contributed to the development of universal welfare. Social security and collective wage bargaining policies were rolled back following economic imbalances in the 1980s and the financial crises of the 1990s which led to more restrictive budgetary policies that were most pronounced in Sweden and Iceland. Nonetheless, welfare expenditure remained high in these countries, compared to the European average. Denmark Social welfare reforms emerged from the Kanslergade Agreement of 1933 as part of a compromise package to save the Danish economy. Denmark was the first Nordic country to join the European Union in the 1970s, reflecting the different political approaches to it among the Nordic countries. Finland The early 1990s recession affected the Nordic countries and caused a deep crisis in Finland, and came amid the context of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and collapse of trade from the Eastern Bloc. Like in Sweden, Finland's universalistic welfare state based on the Nordic model was weakened and no longer based on the social-democratic middle ground, as several social welfare policies were often permanently dismantled; however, Finland was hit even harder than Sweden. During the crisis, Finland looked to the European Union, which they were more committed and open to joining than Sweden and especially Norway, while Denmark had already joined the EU by the 1970s. Finland is, to date, the only Nordic country to become a Eurozone member state after fully adopting the euro as its official currency in 2002. Iceland According to analyst Harpa Njálsdóttir, Iceland in the late 2010s moved away from the Nordic model towards the economic liberal model of workfare. She also noted that with the large changes having been made to the social security system, "70% of elderly people now live well below national subsistence criteria, while about 70% of those who live alone and in bad conditions are women." Despite this, as of 2021, Iceland has the lowest poverty rate in the OECD of only 4.9%. Norway Norway's "grand compromise" emerged as a response to the crisis of the early 1930s between the trade union confederation and Norwegian Employers' Association, agreeing on national standards in labour–capital relations and creating the foundation for social harmony throughout the period of compromises. For a period between the 1980s and the 1990s, Norway underwent more neoliberal reforms and marketization than Sweden during the same time frame, while still holding to the traditional foundations of the "social democratic compromise" that was specific to Western capitalism from 1945 to 1973. Norway was the Nordic country least willing to join the European Union. While Finland and Sweden suffered greatly from the 1990s recession, Norway began to earn enough revenue from their oil. As of 2007, the Norwegian state maintained large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, among them petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood and fresh water. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product. Sweden In Sweden, the grand compromise was pushed forward by the Saltsjöbaden Agreement signed by employer and trade union associations at the seaside retreat of Saltsjöbaden in 1938. This agreement provided the foundation for Scandinavian industrial relations throughout Europe's Golden Age of Capitalism. The Swedish model of capitalism developed under the auspices of the Swedish Social Democratic Party which assumed power in 1932 and retained uninterrupted power until 1976. Initially differing very little from other industrialized capitalist countries, the state's role in providing comprehensive welfare and infrastructure expanded after the Second World War until reaching a broadly social democratic consensus in the 1950s which would become known as the social liberal paradigm, which was followed by the neoliberal paradigm by the 1980s and 1990s. According to Phillip O'Hara, "Sweden eventually became part of the Great Capitalist Restoration of the 1980s and 1990s. In all the industrial democracies and beyond, this recent era has seen the retrenchment of the welfare state by reduced social spending in real terms, tax cuts, deregulation and privatization, and a weakening of the influence of organized labor." In the 1950s, Olof Palme and the prime minister Tage Erlander formulated the basis of Swedish social democracy and what would become known as the "Swedish model", drawing inspiration from the reformist socialism of party founder Hjalmar Branting, who stated that socialism "would not be created by brutalized...slaves [but by] the best positioned workers, those who have gradually obtained a normal workday, protective legislation, minimum wages." Arguing against those to their left, the party favored moderatism and wanted to help workers in the here and now, and followed the Fabian argument that the policies were steps on the road to socialism, which would not come about through violent revolution but through the social corporative model of welfare capitalism, to be seen as progressive in providing institutional legitimacy to the labour movement by recognizing the existence of the class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a class compromise within the context of existing class conflict. This Swedish model was characterized by a strong labour movement as well as inclusive publicly funded and often publicly administered welfare institutions. By the early 1980s, the Swedish model began to suffer from international imbalances, declining competitiveness and capital flight. Two polar opposite solutions emerged to restructure the Swedish economy, the first being a transition to socialism by socializing the ownership of industry and the second providing favorable conditions for the formation of private capital by embracing neoliberalism. The Swedish model was first challenged in 1976 by the Meidner Plan promoted by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and trade unions which aimed at the gradual socialization of Swedish companies through wage earner funds. The Meidner Plan aimed to collectivize capital formation in two generations by having the wage earner funds own predominant stakes in Swedish corporations on behalf of workers. This proposal was supported by Palme and the Social Democratic party leadership, but it did not garner enough support upon Palme's assassination and was defeated by the conservatives in the 1991 Swedish general election. Upon returning to power in 1982, the Social Democratic party inherited a slowing economy resulting from the end of the post-war boom. The Social Democrats adopted monetarist and neoliberal policies, deregulating the banking industry, and liberalizing currency in the 1980s. The economic crisis of the 1990s saw greater austerity measures, deregulation, and the privatization of public services. Into the 21st century, it greatly affected Sweden and its universalistic welfare state, although not as hard as Finland. Sweden remained more Eurosceptic than Finland, and its struggles affected all the other Nordic countries, as it was seen as "the guiding star of the north", and with Sweden fading away, other Nordic countries also felt like they were losing their political identities. When the Nordic model was then gradually rediscovered, cultural explanations were sought for the special features of the Nordic countries. Reception The Nordic model has been positively received by some American politicians and political commentators. Jerry Mander has likened the Nordic model to a kind of "hybrid" system which features a blend of capitalist economics with socialist values, representing an alternative to American-style capitalism. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has pointed to Scandinavia and the Nordic model as something the United States can learn from, in particular with respect to the benefits and social protections the Nordic model affords workers and its provision of universal healthcare. Scandinavian political scientist Daniel Schatz argued that Sanders is wrong, saying that "the success of Nordic countries like Swedenas measured by relatively high living standards accompanied by low poverty, with government-funded education through university, universal health coverage, generous parental-leave policies and long life spansprecedes the contemporary welfare state.", adding that "Research has suggested that the Northern European success story has its roots in cultural rather than economic factors. The Scandinavian countries ... historically developed remarkably high levels of social trust, a robust work ethic and considerable social cohesion". According to Luciano Pellicani, the social and political measures adopted in countries like Sweden and Denmark are the same that some other European left-wing politicians theorised to combine justice and freedom, referring to liberal socialism and movements like Giustizia e Libertà and Fabian Society. According to Naomi Klein, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sought to move the Soviet Union in a similar direction to the Nordic system, combining free markets with a social safety net, but still retaining public ownership of key sectors of the economyingredients that he believed would transform the Soviet Union into "a socialist beacon for all mankind." The Nordic model has also been positively received by various social scientists and economists. American professor of sociology and political science Lane Kenworthy advocates for the United States to make a gradual transition toward a social democracy similar to those of the Nordic countries, defining social democracy as such: "The idea behind social democracy was to make capitalism better. There is disagreement about how exactly to do that, and others might think the proposals in my book aren't true social democracy. But I think of it as a commitment to use government to make life better for people in a capitalist economy. To a large extent, that consists of using public insurance programsgovernment transfers and services." Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that there is higher social mobility in the Scandinavian countries than in the United States and posits that Scandinavia is now the land of opportunity that the United States once was. American author Ann Jones, who lived in Norway for four years, posits that "the Nordic countries give their populations freedom from the market by using capitalism as a tool to benefit everyone" whereas in the United States "neoliberal politics puts the foxes in charge of the henhouse, and capitalists have used the wealth generated by their enterprises (as well as financial and political manipulations) to capture the state and pluck the chickens." Economist Jeffrey Sachs is a proponent of the Nordic model, having pointed out that the Nordic model is "the proof that modern capitalism can be combined with decency, fairness, trust, honesty, and environmental sustainability." The Nordic combination of extensive public provision of welfare and a culture of individualism has been described by Lars Trägårdh of Ersta Sköndal University College as "statist individualism." A 2016 survey by the think tank Israel Democracy Institute found that nearly 60 percent of Israeli Jews preferred a "Scandinavian model" economy, with high taxes and a robust welfare state. Criticism Socialist economists Pranab Bardhan and John Roemer criticize Nordic-style social democracy for its questionable effectiveness in promoting relative egalitarianism as well as its sustainability. They posit that Nordic social democracy requires a strong labour movement to sustain the heavy redistribution required, arguing that it is idealistic to think similar levels of redistribution can be accomplished in countries with weaker labour movements. They say that even in the Scandinavian countries social democracy has been in decline since the weakening of the labour movement in the early 1990s, arguing that the sustainability of social democracy is limited. Roemer and Bardham posit that establishing a market-based socialist economy by changing enterprise ownership would be more effective than social democratic redistribution at promoting egalitarian outcomes, particularly in countries with weak labour movements. Historian Guðmundur Jónsson said that it would be historically inaccurate to include Iceland in one aspect of the Nordic model, that of consensus democracy. Addressing the time period from 1950 to 2000, Jónsson writes that "Icelandic democracy is better described as more adversarial than consensual in style and practice. The labour market was rife with conflict and strikes more frequent than in Europe, resulting in strained government–trade union relationship. Secondly, Iceland did not share the Nordic tradition of power-sharing or corporatism as regards labour market policies or macro-economic policy management, primarily because of the weakness of Social Democrats and the Left in general. Thirdly, the legislative process did not show a strong tendency towards consensus-building between government and opposition with regard to government seeking consultation or support for key legislation. Fourthly, the political style in legislative procedures and public debate in general tended to be adversarial rather than consensual in nature." In a 2017 study, economists James Heckman and Rasmus Landersøn compared American and Danish social mobility, and found that social mobility is not as high as figures might suggest in the Nordic countries, although they did find that Denmark ranks higher in income mobility. When looking exclusively at wages (before taxes and transfers), Danish and American social mobility are very similar; it is only after taxes and transfers are taken into account that Danish social mobility improves, indicating that Danish economic redistribution policies are the key drivers of greater mobility. Additionally, Denmark's greater investment in public education did not improve educational mobility significantly, meaning children of non-college educated parents are still unlikely to receive college education, although this public investment did result in improved cognitive skills amongst poor Danish children compared to their American peers. There was evidence that generous welfare policies could discourage the pursuit of higher-level education due to decreasing the economic benefits that college education level jobs offer and increasing welfare for workers of a lower education level. Some welfare and gender researchers based in the Nordic countries suggest that these states have often been over-privileged when different European societies are being assessed in terms of how far they have achieved gender equality. They posit that such assessments often utilise international comparisons adopting conventional economic, political, educational, and well-being measures. By contrast, they suggest that if one takes a broader perspective on well-being incorporating, such as social issues associated with bodily integrity or bodily citizenship, then some major forms of men's domination still stubbornly persist in the Nordic countries, e.g. business, violence to women, sexual violence to children, the military, academia, and religion. While praising the Nordic model as a "clear and compelling contrast to the neoliberal ideology that has strafed the rest of the world with inequality, ill-health and needless poverty," economic anthropologist Jason Hickel sharply criticizes the "ecological disaster" that accompanies it, noting that data shows the Nordic countries "have some of the highest levels of resource use and CO2 emissions in the world, in consumption based terms, drastically overshooting safe planetary boundaries," and rank towards the bottom of the Sustainable Development Index. He argues that the model needs to be updated for the Anthropocene, and reduce overconsumption while retaining the positive elements of progressive social democracy including universal healthcare and education, paid vacations and reasonable working hours, which have resulted in much better health outcomes and poverty reduction compared to overtly neoliberal countries like the United States, in order to "stand as a beacon for the rest of the world in the 21st century." Swedish economist John Gustavsson, writing for American conservative magazine The Dispatch, criticized the Nordic model for its high taxation rates, including on the middle class and poor people. Political scientist Michael Cottakis has noted the rise of right-wing populist and anti-immigration sentiment in the Nordic countries, arguing that these countries, in particular Sweden, have failed to handle immigration effectively. Misconceptions George Lakey, author of Viking Economics, says that Americans generally misunderstand the nature of the Nordic model, commenting: "Americans imagine that "welfare state" means the U.S. welfare system on steroids. Actually, the Nordics scrapped their American-style welfare system at least 60 years ago, and substituted universal services, which means everyonerich and poorgets free higher education, free medical services, free eldercare, etc." In a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the centre-right Danish prime minister from the conservative-liberal Venstre party, addressed the American misconception that the Nordic model is a form of socialism, which is conflated with any form of planned economy, stating: "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy." See also Dirigisme, a socioeconomic model associated with France Folkhemmet Liberal socialism Market socialism Nefco Polder model Rehn–Meidner model Rhenish model, a socioeconomic model associated with Germany Social democracy Social market economy Welfare in Finland Welfare in Sweden Lists Human Development Index Legatum Prosperity Index List of countries by GDP per capita List of countries by income equality List of countries by life expectancy List of countries by share of income of the richest one percent List of countries by wealth per adult List of international rankings Press Freedom Index Social Progress Index Where-to-be-born Index References Further reading Kjellberg, Anders (2022) The Nordic Model of Industrial Relations . Lund: Department of Sociology. Kjellberg, Anders (2023) The Nordic Model of Industrial Relations: comparing Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden . Department of Sociology, Lund University and Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne. Livingston, Michael A. (2021). Dreamworld or Dystopia? The Nordic Model and Its Influence in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. External links "The Nordic Way". . Davos: World Economic Forum. January 2011. Retrieved 3 December 2019. Thorsen, Dag Einar; Brandal, Nik; Bratberg, Øivind (8 April 2013). Utopia sustained: "The Nordic model of social democracy". Fabian Society. Retrieved 3 December 2019. "The secret of their success". The Economist. 2 February 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2019. Sanders, Bernie (26 July 2013). "What Can We Learn From Denmark?". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 3 December 2019. Isaacs, Julia (25 September 2013). "What Is Scandinavia Doing Right?". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 December 2019. Stahl, Rune Møller Stahl; Mulvad, Andreas Møller (4 August 2015). "What Makes Scandinavia Different?". Jacobin. Retrieved 3 December 2019. "The Nordic Model: Local Government, Global Competitiveness in Denmark, Finland and Sweden". KommuneKredit. August 2017. Retrieved 3 October 2020. Goodman, Peter S. (11 July 2019). "The Nordic Model May Be the Best Cushion Against Capitalism. Can It Survive Immigration?". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 October 2020. "Om Norden" (in Swedish). Föreningen Norden. Retrieved 3 December 2019. "The Nordic Model". Nordics. Aarhus University. Retrieved 3 October 2020. Capitalism Corporatism Economic policy in Europe Economic systems Mixed economies Nordic politics Political-economic models Social democracy Welfare in Europe

Media democracy

Media democracy is a democratic approach to media studies that advocates for the reform of mass media to strengthen public service broadcasting and develop participation in alternative media and citizen journalism in order to create a mass media system that informs and empowers all members of society and enhances democratic values. Media democracy is both a theory and a social movement. It is against concentration in the ownership of media, and it champions diversity of voices and perspectives within the news system. Definition Media democracy focuses on the empowerment of individual citizens and on the promotion of democratic ideals through the spread of information. Additionally, the approach argues that the media system itself should be democratic in its own construction, shying away from private ownership or intense regulations. Media democracy entails that media should be used to promote democracy and that media itself should be democratic. For example, it views media ownership concentration as undemocratic and as being unable to promote democracy, and thus, as facet of media that must be examined critically. Both the concept and the social movements promoting it have grown in response to the increased corporate domination in mass media and perceived shrinking of the marketplace of ideas. It understands media as a tool with the power to reach a large audience with a central role in shaping culture. The concept of a media democracy follows in response to the deregulation of broadcast markets and the concentration of mass media ownership. In the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, authors Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky outline the propaganda model of media, which states that the private interests in control of media outlets shape news and information before it is disseminated to the public through the use of five information filters. Media democracy gives people the right to participate in media. It extends the media's relationship to the public sphere, where the information gathered can be viewed and shared by the people. The relationship of media democracy and the public sphere extends to various types of media, such as social media and mainstream media, in order for people to communicate with one another through digital media and share the information they want to publish to the public. The term also refers to a modern social movement evident in countries all over the world. It attempts to make mainstream media more accountable to the publics they serve and to create more democratic alternatives to current forms of mass media. Media democracy advocates for: Replacing the current corporate media model with one that operates democratically, rather than for profit; Strengthening public service broadcasting; Incorporating the use of alternative media into the larger discourse; Increasing the role of citizen journalism; Turning a passive audience into active participants; Using the mass media to promote democratic ideals. The competitive structure of the mass media landscape stands in opposition to democratic ideals since the competition of the marketplace affects how stories are framed and transmitted to the public. This can "hamper the ability of the democratic system to solve internal social problems as well as international conflicts in an optimal way." Media democracy is grounded in creating a mass media system that favours a diversity of voices and opinions over ownership or consolidation, in an effort to eliminate bias in coverage. This, in turn, leads to the informed public debate necessary for a democratic state. The ability to comprehend and scrutinize the connection between press and democracy is important because media has the power to tell a society's stories and thereby influence thinking, beliefs and behaviour. Media ownership concentration Cultural studies have investigated changes in the increasing tendency of modern mass media in the field of politics to blur and confuse the boundaries between journalism, entertainment, public relations and advertising. A diverse range of information providers is necessary so that viewers, readers and listeners receive a broad spectrum of information from varying sources that is not tightly controlled, biased and filtered. Access to different sources of information prevents deliberate attempts at misinformation and allows the public to make their own judgments and form their own opinions. This is critical as individuals must be in a position to decide and act autonomously for there to be a functioning democracy. The last several decades have seen an increased concentration of media ownership by large private entities. In the United States, these organizations are known as the Big Six. They include: General Electric, Walt Disney Co., News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and CBS Corporation. A similar approach has been taken in Canada, where most media outlets are owned by national conglomerates. This has led to a reduction in the number of voices and opinions communicated to the public; to an increase in the commercialization of news and information; a reduction in investigative reporting; and an emphasis on infotainment and profitability over informative public discourse. The concentration of media outlets has been encouraged by government deregulation and neoliberal trade policies. In the United States, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed most of the media ownership rules that were previously put in place. This led to a massive consolidation of the telecommunications industry. Over 4,000 radio stations were bought out, and minority ownership in TV stations dropped to its lowest point since 1990 when the federal government began tracking the data. Another aspect of the concentration of media ownership is the nature of the political economy that follows. Some media theorists argue that corporate interest is put forth, and that only the small cluster of media outlets have the privilege of controlling the information that the population can access. Moreover, media democracy claims that corporate ownership and commercial pressures influence media content, sharply limiting the range of news, opinions, and entertainment citizens receive. Consequently, they call for a more equal distribution of economic, social, cultural, and information capital, which would lead to a more informed citizenry, as well as a more enlightened, representative political discourse. To counter media ownership concentration, advocates of media democracy support media diversification. For instance, they prefer local news sources, for they allow for a greater variety in the ideas being spread thanks to being outside the corporate economy, since diversity is at the root of a fair democracy. Internet media democracy The World Wide Web, particularly Web 2.0, is seen as a powerful medium for facilitating the growth of a media democracy as it offers participants "a potential voice, a platform, and access to the means of production." The internet is being utilized as a medium for political activity and other pressing issues such as social, environmental, and economic problems []. Moreover, the utilization of the internet has allowed online users to participate in political discourse freely and increase their democratic presence online and in person.Users share information such as voting polls, dates, locations, and statistics, or information about protests and news that is not yet covered by the media. The Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa, media was used for democratic purposes and uprisings. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed citizens to connect quickly, exchange information, and organize protests against their governments. While social media is not solely credited with the success of these protests, the technologies played an important role in instilling change in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. These acts show that a population can be informed through alternative media channels and adjust its behaviour accordingly. Individuals who did not have the facility to access these social media platforms were still able to observe news through satellite channels and other people who were able to connect online. Crowdfunded websites are also linked to a heightened spread of media democracy. The Romanian Election of 2014 [] serves as an example of internet media democracy. During the elections, many took to social media to voice their opinions and share pictures of themselves at polling centres all around the world. This 2014 election is remembered as the first time in which virtual ambition and the use of social media translated positively and directly onto polling numbers. Many Romanians were actively campaigning online through social media platforms, specifically, Facebook, "As more than 7 million Romanians have profiles on at least one social network and more than 70% of that one were active daily, the campaign was focused on the development of the civic participation through internet social networks." Restriction in media Restrictions in media may exist either directly or indirectly. Before internet usage of media, as well as social media, became prominent, ordinary citizens rarely had much control over media. Even as the usage of social media has increased, major corporations still maintain the primary control over media as they are acquiring more and more platforms that would be considered in public use today. Media has been compared in the sense that it is the usage of media that determines how the content is considered, rather than the actual messages of the content. According to Alec Charles edited Media/Democracy, “It is not the press or television or the internet or even democracy itself that is good or bad. It is what we do with them that makes them so”. The role government plays in media restrictions in media has been viewed with skepticism as well. The government involvement in media is possibly due to distrust between the government and media, as the government has criticized media before. Partial blame for distrust between the government and the public on both sides often goes to media as the public may feel as though there is false information though media and the government may feel as though media is giving the public false information. These functions of media in the way that it exists is described in a review of Victor Pickard's book, America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform, where Josh Shepperd wrote, “If one approaches the historical question of media ownership from a public service model, the private emphasis of the system requires praise for its innovations and self-sustainability, but deserves deep interrogation for its largely uncontested claim that the system, as is, provides the best opportunity for social recognition”. In his 2005 speech at the NASIG, Leif Utne states that media democracy is related to freedom of press because it contributes to the reciprocal exchange of desires and information between the press, the state, and the population. Normative roles of media in democracy Monitorial role The term is originally coined by Harold Lasswell who associated the monitorial role with surveillance, "observing an extended environment for relevant information about events, conditions, trends, and threats." This form of media democracy is organized through the scanning of the real world of people, status and events, and potentially relevant sources of information. Under the guidance of relevance, importance, and normative framework that regulates the public domain, such information is evaluated and verified. Staying alert and controlling political power. It provides information to individuals to make their own decisions. The monitorial role involves practices such as publishing reports, agendas, and threats, reporting political, social, and economic decisions, and shedding light to public opinion. Facilitative role Media democracy uses journalism as a means to improve the quality of public life and promote democratic forms. It serves as a glue to hold community together. And it also enhances the ability and desire to listen to others. Radical role Going to the "root" of power relations and inequality and exposing their negative impacts upon the quality of everyday life and the health of democracy. Oppositional to commercial/mainstream media which tend to protect the interest of the powerful and fail to provide information that raises critical awareness and generated empowerment. Cultivating political advocacy motivates engaging in political social democracy. Collaborative role Collaboration between media and state is always open and transparent. Actual roles of media in democracy There is widespread concern that the mass media and social media are not serving the role that a well-functioning democracy. For example, the media is in charge of broadcasting political news to truthfully inform the population, but those messages can have a double purpose (promoting the good of the population and advancing the politicians' career through public relations), which can make the journalists' work more difficult. There is a need for the public to be informed about certain issues whether it may be social, political, or environmental. The media is heavily credited for keeping the public informed and up-to-date with activity, however, throughout the 80's and 90's corporate media has taken over in providing this information. Feminism Feminist media theories argue that the media cannot be considered truly inclusive or democratic if it continues relying on masculine concepts of impartiality and objectivity. They argue that creating a more inclusive and democratic media requires reconceptualizing how we define the news and its principles. According to some feminist media theorists, news is like fictional genres that impose order and interpretation on its materials by means of narrative. Consequently, the news narrative put forward presents only one angle of a much wider picture. It is argued that the distinction between public and private information that underpins how we define valuable or appropriate news content is also a gendered concept. The feminist argument follows that the systematic subversion of private or subjective information excludes women's voices from the popular discourse. Further to this point, feminist media theorists argue there is an assumed sense of equality implicit in the definition of the public that ignores important differences between genders in terms of their perspectives. So while media democracy in practice as alternative or citizen journalism may allow for greater diversity, these theorists argue that women's voices are framed within a masculine structure of objectivity and rationalist thinking. Despite this criticism, there is an acceptance among some theorists that the blurring of public and private information with the introduction of some new alternative forms of media production (as well as the increase in opportunities for interaction and user-generated content) may signal a positive shift towards a more democratic and inclusive media democracy. Some forms of media democracy in practice (as citizen or alternative journalism) are challenging journalism's central tenets (objectivity and impartiality) by rejecting the idea that it is possible to tell a narrative without bias and, more to the point, that it is socially or morally preferable. Activism Media Democracy Day, OpenMedia, and NewsWatch Canada are all Canadian initiatives that strive for reforms in the media. They aim to give an equal voice to all interests. Others, such as the creators of the Indonesian television program Newsdotcom, focus on increasing the population's media literacy rate to make the people more critical of the news they consume. Criticism The media has given political parties the tools to reach large numbers of people and inform them on key issues ranging from policies to elections. The media can be seen as an enabler for democracy; having better-educated voters would lead to a more legitimate government. However, critics such as Julian King have argued that malicious actors can easily hijack those same tools - both state and non-state - and use them as weapons against people. In the past few years, media has become a direct threat to democracy. Two organizations of the Omidyar Group, Democracy Fund and Omidyar Network assembled to establish the relationship between media and democracy. Their initial findings presented six ways that social media was a direct threat to democracy. Many social media platforms, such as Facebook, utilize surveillance infrastructure to collect user data and micro-target populations with personalized advertisements. With users leaving digital footprints almost everywhere they go, social media platforms create portfolios of the user to target them with specific advertisements. This leads to the formation of "echo chambers, polarization and hyper-partisanship." Therefore, social media platforms create bubbles, which are forever growing, of one-sided information and opinions. These bubbles trap the users and diminish opportunities for a healthy discourse. A commonly known effect social media has on democracy is the "spread of false and/or misleading information". Disinformation and Misinformation is commonly, at scale, spread across social media by both state and private actors, mainly using bots. Each type poses a threat as it floods social media with multiple, competing realities shifting the truth, facts and evidence to the side. Social media follows an algorithm that converts popularity into legitimacy, this is the idea that likes or retweets create validity or mass support. In theory, it creates a distorted system of evaluating information and provides a false representation. It's further harder to distinguish who is a troll or a bot. Social media further allows for manipulation by "populist leaders, governments and fringe actors". "Populist" leaders use platforms such as Twitter, Instagram to communicate with their electorate. However, such platforms allow them to roam freely with no restrictions allowing them to silence the minority voice, showcase momentum for their views or creating the impression of approval. Finally, social media causes the disruption of the public square. Some social media platforms have user policies and technical features that enable unintended consequences, such as hate speech, terrorist appeals, sexual and racial harassment, thus discouraging any civil debates. This leads the targeted groups to opting out of participating in public discourse. as much as social media has made it easier for the public to receive and access news and entertainment from their devices it has been dangerous in terms of rapid spread of fake news (2019). the public is now easily accessible to those with the intend to spread disinformation information in order to harm and misled the public. those in authority, officials and the elite use their power to dominate the narratives on social media often times to gain their support and misled them. See also Democratic media Embedded journalism Free Press (organization) Media conglomerate Media Lens Media literacy mediatization, how media interact with society and democracy Media manipulation Outfoxed Participatory culture Prometheus Radio Project Save the Internet Social aspects of television National Conference for Media Reform Radical media References Further reading Hackett, Robert A. (2001). Building a Movement for Media Democratization. In P. Phillips and Project Censored. Project Censored 2001. New York : Seven Stories. Hackett, Robert A. & Carroll, William K. (2006). Remaking Media: The Struggle to Democratize Public Communication. New York; London: Routledge Hazen, Don and Julie Winokur, (eds). (1997) We the Media: A Citizens’ Guide to Fighting for Media Democracy. New York: The New Press. Lewis, Jeff (2005) Language Wars: The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence, London: University of Michigan Press/ Pluto Books, 2005. McChesney, Robert, Making Media Democratic, Boston Review, Summer 1998 McChesney, Robert Waterman. (2000). Rich media, poor democracy: Communication politics in dubious times. New York: New Press. McChesney, Robert W. and Nichols, John (2002) Our Media, Not theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media. New York : Seven Stories. Rush, Ramona R. and Allen, Donna, (eds). (1989) "Communications at the Crossroads: The Gender Gap Connection. New Jerskey: Ablex Publishing. Allen, Donna and Rush, Ramona R. and Kaufman, Susan J. (eds). (1996) "Women Transforming Communications, Global Intersections." Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Ross, Karen and Byerly, Carolyn M. (eds.). (2004) "Women and Media, International Perspectives" Malden: Blackwell Publishers. Byerley, Carolyn M. (ed.) (2013) "The Palgrave International Handbook of Women and Journalism" New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mass media issues Social movements Community building Types of democracy

Democratic capitalism

Democratic capitalism, also referred to as market democracy, is a political and economic system that integrates resource allocation by marginal productivity (synonymous with free-market capitalism), with policies of resource allocation by social entitlement. The policies which characterise the system are enacted by democratic governments. Democratic capitalism was implemented widely in the 20th century, particularly in Europe and the Western world after the Second World War. The coexistence of capitalism and democracy, particularly in Europe, was supported by the creation of the modern welfare state in the post-war period. The implementation of democratic capitalism typically involves the enactment of policies expanding the welfare state, strengthening the collective bargaining rights of employees, or strengthening competition laws. These policies are enacted in a capitalist economy characterized by the right to private ownership of property. Catholic social teaching offers support for a communitarian form of democratic capitalism with an emphasis on the preservation of human dignity. Definition Democratic capitalism is a type of political and economic system characterised by resource allocation according to both marginal productivity and social need, as determined by decisions reached through democratic politics. It is marked by democratic elections, freedom, and rule of law, characteristics typically associated with democracy. It retains a free-market economic system with an emphasis on private enterprise. Professor of Entrepreneurship Elias G. Carayannis and Arisitidis Kaloudis, Economics Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), describe democratic capitalism as an economic system which combines robust competitiveness with sustainable entrepreneurship, with the aim of innovation and providing opportunities for economic prosperity to all citizens. Edward Younkins, professor at Wheeling University, described democratic capitalism as a “dynamic complex of economic, political, moral-cultural, ideological, and institutional forces”, which serves to maximize social welfare within a free market economy. Younkins states that the system of individual liberty inherent within democratic capitalism supports the creation of voluntary associations, such as labour unions. Philosopher and writer Michael Novak characterised democratic capitalism as a blend of a free-market economy, a limited democratic government, and moral-cultural system with an emphasis on personal freedom. Novak comments that capitalism is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of democracy. He also proposes that the prominence of democratic capitalism in a society is strongly determined by the religious concepts which drive its customs, institutions, and leaders. History Early to mid-20th century The development of democratic capitalism was influenced by several historical factors, including the rapid economic growth following World War One, the Great Depression, and the political and economic ramifications of World War Two. The growing critique of free-market capitalism and the rise of the notion of social justice in political debate contributed to the adoption of democratic capitalist policies. At the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, officials from the United States and the United Kingdom and forty-two other nations committed to trade openness. This commitment was made in conjunction with international guidelines which guaranteed autonomy for each country in responding to economic and social demands of its voters. Officials requested international capital controls which would allow governments to regulate their economies while remaining committed to the goals of full employment and economic growth. The adoption of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade supported free trade, while allowing national governments to retain veto power over trade policy. Such developments saw the incorporation of democratic demands into policies based on capitalist economic logic. Democratic capitalism was first widely implemented after the Second World War in the Western world, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Following the severe economic impacts of the war, working classes in the Western world were more inclined to accept capitalist markets in conjunction with political democracy, which enabled a level of social security and improved living standards. In the post-war decades, democratic capitalist policies saw reduced levels of socioeconomic inequality. This was synonymous with the expansion of welfare states, more highly regulated financial and labour markets, and increased political power of labour unions. According to political scientist Wolfgang Merkel, democracy and capitalism coexisted with more complementarity at this time than at any other point in history. Policy makers in Europe and Asia adopted democratic capitalist policies in an attempt to satisfy the social needs of their voters and respond to the challenge of communism. The policies implemented supported the public provision of medical care, improved public housing, aged care, and more accessible education. Guarantees of full employment and the support of private research and innovation became priorities of policy makers. Policy developments were based on the rising notion that free markets required some state intervention to maintain them, provide structure, and address social inequities caused by them. Governments around the world regulated existing markets in an attempt to increase their equity and effectiveness. In order to stabilise the business cycle, the role of government was reconceived by anticommunist leaders in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, and Japan. An emphasis was placed on supporting economic growth, promoting innovation, and enhancing living standards. This saw the expansion of educational opportunities and public insurance of basic health and aged benefits. United States As automated production expanded in the United States, demand for semi skilled workers increased. Combined with the expansion of secondary education, this saw the development of a large working class. The resulting strong economic growth and improved income equality allowed for greater social peace and universal suffrage. Capitalism was viewed as a means of producing the wealth which maintained political freedom, while a democratic government ensured accountable political institutions and an educated labour force with its basic rights fulfilled. Europe In the postwar period, free market economic systems with political systems of democracy and welfare states were established in France and Germany. This occurred under the leadership of the Popular Republican Movement in France and the Christian Democratic Union in Germany. Late 20th century Following the oil shocks of the 1970s and the productivity slowdown in the United States in the 1980s, politicians and voters maintained strong support for democratic capitalist policies and free markets. Globalisation and free trade were promoted as a means of boosting economic growth, and this saw the formation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union. Labour market and competition regulations were eased in existing free-market economies, particularly in Anglo-America. Rapid technological innovation and globalisation brought widespread international economic change. Publicly funded democratic capitalist policies were designed and implemented to compensate individuals negatively affected by major, structural economic change. Implemented beginning in the early years of the Cold War, such policies included unemployment benefits, universal or partially universal healthcare, and aged pensions. Post-1970s, the number of public sector jobs available expanded. Ageing populations in Europe, Japan and North America saw large increases in public spending on pensions and healthcare. In the 1980s, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies began reducing corporate taxation, though personal income taxes and public spending on social security programs generally remained stable. Large-scale innovation in production technology throughout the 20th century had widespread economic benefits in many capitalist economies. These benefits contributed to the conciliation of democratic politics and free markets and the widespread acceptance of democratic capitalist policies by voters. From the late 20th century, the tenets of democratic capitalism expanded more broadly beyond North America and Western Europe. United States After taking office as president in 1981, Ronald Reagan advocated for a reduced role of government in the economy, while responding to voters’ skepticism of liberal capitalism by maintaining strong public sector spending. Many voters doubted the ability of free market capitalism to provide consistent peace, security and opportunity, and sought improved living standards, aged care, and educational opportunities for youth. The Reagan administration maintained previous levels of government expenditure on Social Security and Medicare as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP). Total government expenditure levels as a percentage of GDP also remained stable under the Reagan administration. Europe From the mid-1980s, European leaders began endorsing neoliberal ideas, such as those associated with Reaganomics and Thatcherism, based on the notion of the interdependence of economic and social policy. In this context, European competition law policy developed as a method of curbing the excesses of capitalism, while aligning the economy of the European Union with the existing democratic ideals of European society. This saw the advancement of democratic capitalism throughout the European region. South Africa The South African Competition Act of 1998 prioritised the eradication of anticompetitive business practices and the free participation in the economy of all citizens, while maintaining a pro-free-market economy. Early 21st century India India enacted the Competition Act, 2002 to promote and sustain competition and protect the welfare of market participants, goals synonymous with democratic capitalism. Implementation The post-war implementation of democratic capitalism saw the expansion of welfare states and the free collective bargaining rights of employees, alongside market policies designed to ensure full employment. Under democratic capitalism, an autonomous democratic state enacts of policies which in effect create a compromise between upper and lower classes, while remaining compatible with free-market capitalism. Such policies include the establishment or expansion of a welfare state, as a method of mediating social class conflict and catering to the demands of workers. The system is characterised by the establishment of cooperative economic institutions. This includes institutions which facilitate bargaining between government bodies and business and labour organisations such as unions, and those which regulate the relationships between employees and management within private firms. The development of institutions to promote cooperation among public and private economic entities acknowledges the benefits of market competition, while attempting to address the social problems of unrestrained capitalism. Economic security concerns of citizens are addressed through redistributive policies. Such policies include income transfers, such as welfare payment programs and pensions, to support the financial needs of the elderly and the poor. Other policies which promote economic security include social insurance, and the fiscal financing of education and job training programs to stimulate employment. The right to private ownership of productive property is a central tenet of democratic capitalism, and is recognized as a basic liberty of all democratic citizens, as in a regular free-market capitalist economy. According to political philosopher John Tomasi, democratic capitalism addresses social entitlement and justice concerns through the preservation of citizens’ private property rights, allowing citizens to be “free, equal, and self-governing”. The robust competitiveness and sustainable entrepreneurship which define democratic capitalism are characterised by top-down policies and bottom-up initiatives implemented by democratic governments. Top-down policies are planned and implemented by formal leaders in an organisation, while bottom-up policies involve gradual change initiated and sustained by lower-level members of organisations. Policies implemented are designed to incentivise public and private sector innovation. Examples include strong research and development funding, and policies which protect intellectual property rights. Competition law A characteristic of democratic capitalist economies is the democratic enactment of laws and regulations to support competition. Such laws include United States antitrust laws. Competition laws are designed to regulate private sector activities, including the actions of capital asset owners and managers, in order to prevent outcomes which are socially undesirable according to the democratic majority. The implementation of competition law is intended to prevent anti-competitive behaviour that is harmful to the welfare of consumers, while maintaining a free market economy. The implementation of antitrust laws was found to be a characteristic of democratic capitalism specifically, and not regular free-market capitalism. Conflicts between notions of resource allocation According to economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, the capitalist markets and democratic policies that characterise democratic capitalism are inherently conflicting. Streeck suggests that under democratic capitalism, governments tend to neglect policies of resource allocation by marginal productivity in favour of those of resource allocation by social entitlement, or vice versa. In particular, he comments that the accelerating inflation of the 1970s in the Western world can be attributed to rising trade-union wage pressure in labour markets and the political priority of full employment, both of which are synonymous with democratic capitalism. In Catholic social teaching Catholic texts offer support for a form of socially regulated democratic capitalism. The papal encyclical Centesimus annus, written by Pope John Paul II, emphasizes a vision of a communitarian form of democratic capitalism. The communitarian system of democratic capitalism described promotes respect for individual rights and basic workers’ rights, a virtuous community, and a limited role for the state and the market. According to the encyclical, these characteristics should be combined with a conscious effort to promote institutions which develop character in individuals. The encyclical stressed to decision makers the importance of the dignity of the person and a concern for the poor, while acknowledging the need to balance economic efficiency with social equity. The US Bishops’ 1986 Pastoral Letter Economic Justice for All suggested that specific institutional arrangements be developed to support this form of democratic capitalism. Arrangements proposed included structures of accountability designed to involve all stakeholders, such as employees, customers, local communities, and wider society, in the corporate decision making process, as opposed to stockholders only. The letter offered acceptance for the market economy under the condition that the state intervene where necessary to preserve human dignity. See also Democratic communism Democratic socialism Georgism Libertarian paternalism Mixed economy Neoclassical liberalism Post-war consensus Regulatory capitalism Social democracy Social market economy State capitalism Welfare capitalism References Capitalism Democracy Economic ideologies Economic liberalism Economic systems Ideologies of capitalism Types of democracy

Political system

In political science, a political system means the form of political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state. It defines the process for making official government decisions. It usually comprizes the governmental legal and economic system, social and cultural system, and other state and government specific systems. However, this is a very simplified view of a much more complex system of categories involving the questions of who should have authority and what the government influence on its people and economy should be. Along with a basic sociological and socio-anthropological classification, political systems can be classified on a social-cultural axis relative to the liberal values prevalent in the Western world, where the spectrum is represented as a continuum between political systems recognized as democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes, with a variety of hybrid regimes; and monarchies may be also included as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Definition According to David Easton, "A political system can be designated as the interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society". Political system refers broadly to the process by which laws are made and public resources allocated in a society, and to the relationships among those involved in making these decisions. Basic classification Social anthropologists generally recognize several kinds of political systems, often differentiating between ones that they consider uncentralized and ones they consider centralized. Uncentralized systems Band society Small family group, no larger than an extended family or clan; it has been defined as consisting of no more than 30 to 50 individuals. A band can cease to exist if only a small group walks out. Tribe Generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social institutions, such as a chief or elders. More permanent than bands. Many tribes are sub-divided into bands. Centralized governments Chiefdom More complex than a tribe or a band society, and less complex than a state or a civilization Characterized by pervasive inequality and centralization of authority. A single lineage/family of the elite class becomes the ruling elite of the chiefdom Complex chiefdoms have two or even three tiers of political hierarchy. "An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief" Sovereign state A sovereign state is a state with a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. Supranational political systems Supranational political systems are created by independent nations to reach a common goal or gain strength from forming an alliance. Empires Empires are widespread states consisting of people of different ethnicities under a single rule. Empires - such as the Romans, or British - often made considerable progress in ways of political structures, creating and building city infrastructures, and maintaining civility within the diverse communities. Because of the intricate organization of the empires, they were often able to hold a large majority of power on a universal level. Leagues Leagues are international organizations composed of states coming together for a single common purpose. In this way, leagues are different from empires, as they only seek to fulfill a single goal. Often leagues are formed on the brink of a military or economic downfall. Meetings and hearings are conducted in a neutral location with representatives of all involved nations present. Western socio-cultural paradigmatic-centric analysis The sociological interest in political systems is figuring out who holds power within the relationship between the government and its people and how the government’s power is used. According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there a three main types of political systems today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes (with hybrid regimes). Another modern classification system includes monarchies as a standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Scholars generally refer to a dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism. Democracy Authoritarianism Totalitarian Monarchy Hybrid Marxist/Dialectical materialistic analysis 19th-century German-born philosopher Karl Marx analysed that the political systems of "all" state-societies are the dictatorship of one social class, vying for its interests against that of another one; with which class oppressing which other class being, in essence, determined by the developmental level of that society, and its repercussions implicated thereof, as the society progresses through the passage of time. In capitalist societies, this characterises as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or capitalist class, in which the economic and political system is designed to work in their interests collectively as a class, over those of the proletariat or working class. Marx devised this theory by adapting his forerunner-contemporary Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's notion of dialectics into the framework of materialism. See also Political structure Polity Systems theory in political science Tractatus Politicus Voting system Notes References Further reading Almond, Gabriel A., et al. Comparative Politics Today: A World View (Seventh Edition). 2000. . Ferris, Kerry, and Jill Stein. The Real World An Introduction to Sociology. 3rd ed. New York City: W W Norton & Co, 2012. Print. "political system". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. External links Topic guide on political systems at Governance and Social Development Resource Centre Political terminology

Economic democracy

Economic democracy (sometimes called a democratic economy) is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift ownership and decision-making power from corporate shareholders and corporate managers (such as a board of directors) to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's inherent effective demand gap. Proponents of economic democracy generally argue that modern capitalism periodically results in economic crises, characterized by deficiency of effective demand; as society is unable to earn enough income to purchase its own production output. Corporate monopoly of common resources typically creates artificial scarcity, resulting in socio-economic imbalances that restrict workers from access to economic opportunity and diminish consumer purchasing power. Economic democracy has been proposed as a component of larger socioeconomic ideologies, as a stand-alone theory and as a variety of reform agendas. For example, as a means to securing full economic rights, it opens a path to full political rights, defined as including the former. Both market and non-market theories of economic democracy have been proposed. As a reform agenda, supporting theories and real-world examples can include decentralization, democratic cooperatives, public banking, fair trade and the regionalization of food production and currency. Deficiency of effective demand According to many analysts, deficiency of effective demand is the most fundamental economic problem. That is, modern society does not earn enough income to purchase its output. For example, economic geographer David Harvey claims, "Workers spending their wages is one source of effective demand, but the total wage bill is always less than the total capital in circulation (otherwise there would be no profit), so the purchase of wage goods that sustain daily life (even with a suburban lifestyle) is never sufficient for the profitable sale of the total output". In the Georgist view of any economic system, "wealth" includes all material things produced by labor for the satisfaction of human desires and having exchange value. Land, labor and capital are generally considered the essential factors in producing wealth. Land includes all natural opportunities and forces. Labor includes all human exertion. Capital includes the portion of wealth devoted to producing more wealth. While the income of any individual might include proceeds from any combination of these three sources—land, labor and capital are generally considered mutually exclusive factors in economic models of the production and distribution of wealth. According to Henry George: "People seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion". Human beings interact with nature to produce goods and services that other human beings need or desire. The laws and customs that govern the relationships among these entities constitute the economic structure of a given society. Alternately, David Schweickart asserts in his book, After Capitalism: "The structure of a capitalist society consists of three basic components: "The bulk of the means of production are privately owned, either directly by individuals or by corporations that are themselves owned by private individuals. "Products are exchanged in a market -- that is to say, goods and services are bought and sold at prices determined for the most part by competition and not by some governmental pricing authority. Individual enterprises compete with one another in providing goods and services to consumers, each enterprise trying to make a profit. This competition is the primary determinant of prices. "Most of the people who work for pay in this society work for other people, who own the means of production. Most working people are 'wage labourers'". Supply and demand are generally accepted as market functions for establishing prices. Organisations typically endeavor to 1) minimize the cost of production; 2) increase sales; in order to 3) maximize profits. But, according to David Schweickart, if "those who produce the goods and services of society are paid less than their productive contribution", then as consumers they cannot buy all the goods produced, and investor confidence tends to decline, triggering declines in production and employment. Such economic instability stems from a central contradiction: Wages are both a cost of production and an essential source of effective demand (needs or desires backed with purchasing power), resulting in deficiency of effective demand along with a growing interest in economic democracy. In chapter 3 of his book, "Community Organizing: Theory and Practice", Douglas P. Biklen discusses a variety of perspectives on "The Making of Social Problems". One of those views suggests that "writers and organizers who define social problems in terms of social and economic democracy see problems not as the experiences of poor people, but as the relationship of poverty to wealth and exploitation". Biklen states that according to this viewpoint: Savings, investment and unemployment In his 1879 book Progress and Poverty, Henry George argued that a majority of wealth created in a "free market" economy was appropriated by land owners and monopolists through economic rents, and that concentration of such unearned wealth was the root cause of poverty. "Behind the abstraction known as 'the market' lurks a set of institutions designed to maximize the wealth and power of the most privileged group of people in the world—the creditor-rentier class of the first world and their junior partners in the third". Schweickart claimed that private savings are not only unnecessary for economic growth, they are often harmful to the overall economy. In an advanced industrial society, business credit is necessary for a healthy economy. A business that wants to expand production needs to command the labor of others, and money is the default mechanism for exercising this authority. It is often cheaper for a business to borrow capital from a bank than to stockpile cash. If private savings are loaned out to entrepreneurs who use them to buy raw materials and hire workers, then aggregate demand is not reduced. However, when private savings are not reinvested, the whole economy suffers recession, unemployment, and disappearance of savings which characterize deficiency of effective demand. In this view, unemployment is not an aberration, indicating any sort of systemic malfunction. Rather, unemployment is a necessary structural feature of capitalism, intended to discipline the workforce. If unemployment is too low, workers make wage demands that either cut into profits to an extent that jeopardizes future investment, or are passed on to consumers, thus generating inflationary instability. Schweickart suggested, "Capitalism cannot be a full-employment economy, except in the very short term. For unemployment is the "invisible hand"—carrying a stick—that keeps the workforce in line." In this view, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" does not seem reliable to guide economic forces on a large scale. Assuming business credit could come from public sources rather than from private savers, Schweickart and other analysts consider interest payments to private savers both undeserved and unnecessary for economic growth. Moreover, the personal decision to save rather than consume decreases aggregate demand, increases the likelihood of unemployment, and exacerbates the tendency toward economic stagnation. Since wealthy people tend to save more than poor people, the propensity of an economy to slump because of excess saving becomes ever more acute as a society becomes more affluent. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett suggested that health and social problems are significantly worse in more unequal wealthy nations. They argue that there are "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption" Monopoly power versus purchasing power Regarding a social and economic democracy perspective on social problems, Douglas P. Biklen states: The discipline of economics is largely a study of scarcity management; "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Absent scarcity and alternative uses of available resources, many analysts claim there is no economic problem". While he considers these functions a public wrong, Kellogg also asserted the responsibility of the public to find and implement a remedy. Generally considered monopoly power, some view this "public wrong" as the most influential factor in artificial scarcity. For example, Henry George further suggested: For example, many analysts consider invention a "more or less costless store of knowledge, captured by monopoly capital and protected in order to make it secret and a 'rare and scarce commodity', for sale at monopoly prices. So far as invention is concerned, a price is put on them not because they are scarce but in order to make them scarce to those who want to use them." Patent monopolies raise share prices above tangible labor value. The difference between labor-value and monopoly-value raises goods prices, and is collected as "profit" by intermediaries who have contributed nothing to earn it. Analysts generally agree that such conditions typically result in a deficiency of effective demand. Labor does not earn enough to buy what enterprises produce. According to Jack Rasmus, author of The Trillion Dollar Income Shift, in June 2006, investment bank Goldman Sachs reported: "The most important contribution to the higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in Labor's share of national income." Enclosure of the commons Artificially restricted access of labor to common resources is generally considered monopoly or enclosure of the commons. Due to the economic imbalance inherently imposed, such monopoly structures tend to be centrally dictated by law, and must be maintained by military force, trade agreements, or both. In 1911, American journalist Ambrose Bierce defined "land" as: In The Servile State (1912), Hilaire Belloc referred to the Enclosures Movement when he said, "England was already captured by a wealthy oligarchy before the series of great industrial discoveries began". If you sought the accumulated wealth preliminary to launching new industry, "you had to turn to the class which had already monopolized the bulk of the means of production in England. The rich men alone could furnish you with those supplies". According to Peter Barnes, author of Capitalism 3.0, when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the dominant form of business was partnership, in which regional groups of co-workers ran co-owned businesses. From this perspective, many considered the corporate model—stock sold to strangers—inherently prone to fraud. While numerous scandals historically support this dim view of corporate policy, small partnerships could not possibly compete with the aggregate capital generated by corporate economies of scale. The greatest advantage of corporations over any other business model is their ability to raise capital from strangers. The corporate model benefits from laws that limit stockholders' liability to the amounts they have invested. In A Preface To Economic Democracy, Robert A. Dahl suggests that agrarian economy and society in the early United States "underwent a revolutionary transformation into a new system of commercial and industrial capitalism that automatically generated vast inequalities of wealth, income, status, and power." Dahl claims that such inequalities result from the "liberty to accumulate unlimited economic resources and to organize economic activity into hierarchically governed enterprises." The rise of corporations and ending labor shortage According to author Greg MacLeod, the concept of the corporation originated in Roman times. However, "the modern business corporation evolved radically from its ancient roots into a form with little relation to the purpose as understood by historians of law." John Davis, a legal historian, noted that the precursor of the business corporation was the first monastery, established in the sixth century, the purpose of which was to serve society. Most business corporations before 1900 developed in Great Britain, where they were established by royal charter, with the expectation of contributions to society. Incorporation was a privilege granted in return for service to the crown or the nation. MacLeod goes on to say: By the mid-nineteenth century, corporations could live forever, engage in any legal activity, and merge with or acquire other corporations. In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court legally recognized corporations as “persons”, entitled under the Fourteenth Amendment to the same protections as living citizens. Unlike average citizens, large corporations had large flows of money at their disposal. With this money they can hire lobbyists, donate copiously to politicians, and sway public opinion. But, despite Supreme Court rulings, the modern corporation is not a real person. Rather, the publicly traded stock corporation is what Barnes terms an "automaton", explicitly designed to maximize return to its owners. A corporation never sleeps or slows down. It externalizes as many costs as possible, and never reaches an upper limit of profitability, because no such limit has yet been established. As a result, corporations keep getting larger. In 1955, sales of the Fortune 500 accounted for one-third of U.S. gross domestic product. By 2004 they commanded two-thirds. In other words, these few hundred corporations replaced smaller firms organized as partnerships or proprietorships. Corporations have established a homogeneous global playing field around which they can freely move raw materials, labor, capital, finished products, tax-paying obligations, and profits. Thus, corporate franchise has become a perpetual grant of sovereignty, including immortality, self-government, and limited liability. By the end of the twentieth century, corporate power—both economic and political—stretched worldwide. International agreements not only lowered tariffs but extended corporate property rights and reduced the ability of sovereign nations to regulate corporations. David Schweickart submits that such "hypermobility of capital" generates economic and political insecurity. "If the search for lower wages comes to dominate the movement of capital, the result will be not only a lowering of worldwide wage disparities (the good to which some economists point) but also a lowering of total global income (a straight-out utilitarian bad)." Jack Rasmus, author of The War At Home and The Trillion Dollar Income Shift, argues that the increasing concentration of corporate power is a cause of the large-scale debt, unemployment, and poverty characteristic of economic recession and depression. According to Rasmus, income inequality in contemporary America increased as the relative share of income for corporations and the wealthiest one percent of households rose while income shares declined for 80-percent of the United States workforce. After rising steadily for three decades after World War II, the standard of living for most American workers has sharply declined between the mid-1970s to the present. Rasmus likens the widening income gap in contemporary American society to the decade leading up to the Great Depression, estimating "well over $1 trillion in income is transferred annually from the roughly 90 million working class families in America to corporations and the wealthiest non-working-class households. While a hundred new billionaires were created since 2001, real weekly earnings for 100 million workers are less in 2007 than in 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office". According to economist Richard D. Wolff, the 1970s brought an end to the labor shortage which had facilitated more than a century of rising average real wages in the United States. Wolff says Americans responded to the resulting deficiency of effective demand by working more hours and excessive borrowing; the latter paving the way for the financial crisis of 2007–08. Imperialism According to David Harvey, "the export of capital and the cultivation of new markets around the world" is a solution "as old as capitalism itself" for the deficiency of effective demand. Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." "These geographic shifts", according to David Harvey, "are the heart of uneven geographic development". Vladimir Lenin viewed imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. He asserted that the merging of banks and industrial cartels gave rise to finance capital, which was then exported (rather than goods) in pursuit of greater profits than the home market could offer. Political and financial power became divided among international monopolist firms and European states, colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. According to analyst Michael Parenti, imperialism is "the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people." Parenti says imperialism is older than capitalism. Given its expansionist nature, capitalism has little inclination to stay home. While he conceded imperialism is not typically recognized as a legitimate allegation about the United States, Parenti argued: In his book, The Political Struggle for the 21st century, J.W. Smith examines the economic basis for the history of imperial civilization. On a global scale, he says developed nations tended to impede or prohibit the economic and technological advancement of weaker developing countries through the military force, martial law, and inequitable practices of trade that typically characterize colonialism. Rhetorically termed as "survival of the fittest", or "might makes right", such economic crises stem from the imbalances imposed by corporate imperialism. Just as cities in the Middle Ages monopolized the means of production by conquering and controlling the sources of raw materials and countryside markets, Smith claims that contemporary centers of capital now control our present world through private monopoly of public resources sometimes known as "the commons". Through inequalities of trade, developing countries are overcharged for import of manufactured goods and underpaid for raw material exports, as wealth is siphoned from the periphery of empire and hoarded at the imperial-centers-of-capital: Smith goes on to say that, like other financial empires in history, the contemporary model forms alliances necessary to develop and control wealth, keeping peripheral nations impoverished providers of cheap resources for the imperial capital centers. Belloc estimated that, during the British Enclosures, "perhaps half of the whole population was proletarian", while roughly the other "half" owned and controlled the means of production. Under modern Capitalism, J.W. Smith claimed that fewer than 500 individuals possess more wealth than half of the earth's population. The wealth of 1/2 of 1-percent of the United States population roughly equals that of the lower 90-percent. Alternative models Advocating for an "alternative economic system free of capitalism's structural flaws", economist Richard D. Wolff says reform agendas are fundamentally inadequate, given that capitalist corporations, the dominant institutions of the existing system, retain the incentives and the resources to undo any sort of reform policy. For example, Wolff goes on to say: According to David Schweickart, a serious critique of any problem cannot be content to merely note the negative features of the existing model. Instead, we must specify precisely the structural features of an alternative: "But if we want to do more than simply denounce the evils of capitalism, we must confront the claim that 'there is no alternative'—by proposing one." Schweickart argued that both full employment and guaranteed basic income are impossible under the restrictions of the U.S. economic system for two primary reasons: a) unemployment is an essential feature of capitalism, not an indication of systemic failure; and b) while capitalism thrives under polyarchy, it is not compatible with genuine democracy. Assuming these "democratic deficits" significantly impact the management of both the workplace and new investment, many proponents of economic democracy tend to favor the creation and implementation of a new economic model over reform of the existing one. For example, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed "Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of Capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both". Regarding the gap between productivity and purchasing power, Dr. King maintained: According to historian and political economist, Gar Alperovitz: "King’s final judgment stands as instructive evidence of his understanding of the nature of systemic challenge — and also as a reminder that given the failures of both traditional socialism and corporate capitalism, it is time to get serious about clarifying not only the question of strategy, but what, in fact, the meaning of changing the system in a truly democratic direction might one day entail." Trade unionist and social activist Allan Engler argued further that economic democracy was the working-class alternative to capitalism. In his book, "Economic Democracy", Engler stated: Assuming that "democracy is not just a political value, but one with profound economic implications, the problem is not to choose between plan and market, but to integrate these institutions into a democratic framework". Like capitalism, economic democracy can be defined in terms of three basic features: Worker self-management: each productive enterprise is controlled democratically by its workers. Social control of investment: funds for new investment are returned to the economy through a network of public investment banks. The market: enterprises interact with one another and with consumers in an environment largely free of governmental price controls. Raw materials, instruments of production and consumer goods are all bought and sold at prices largely determined by the forces of supply and demand. In real-world practice, Schweickart concedes economic democracy will be more complicated and less "pure" than his model. However, to grasp the nature of the system and to understand its essential dynamic, it is important to have a clear picture of the basic structure. Capitalism is characterized by private ownership of productive resources, the market, and wage labor. The Soviet economic model subordinated private ownership of productive resources to public ownership by collectivizing farms and factories. It further subordinated the market to central planning—but retained the institution of wage labor. Most proposed models for economic democracy generally begin with democratizing the workplace and the ownership of capital. Other proposals advocate replacing the market with some form of planning, as well (for example, Parecon). Worker self-management In worker self-management, each productive enterprise is controlled by those who work there. Workers are responsible for the operation of the facility, including organization, discipline, production techniques, and the nature, price, and distribution of products. Decisions concerning distribution are made democratically. Problems of authority delegation are solved by democratic representation. Management is chosen by the worker, not appointed by the State, not elected by the community at large and not selected by a board of directors elected by stockholders. Ultimate authority rests with the enterprise's workers, following the one-person, one-vote principle. According to veteran World Bank economic adviser David P. Ellerman it's the employment contract that needs to be abolished, not private property. In other words, "a firm can be socialized and yet remain 'private' in the sense of not being government-owned." In his book, "The Democratic Firm", Ellerman stated: Alternately, in Schweickart's model, workers control the workplace, but they do not "own" the means of production. Productive resources are regarded as the collective property of the society. Workers run the enterprise, use its capital assets as they see fit, and distribute the profits among themselves. Here, societal "ownership" of the enterprise manifests itself in two ways: 1) All firms pay tax on their capital assets, which goes into society's investment fund. In effect, workers rent capital assets from society. 2) Firms are required to preserve the value of the capital stock entrusted to them. This means that a depreciation fund must be maintained to repair or replace existing capital stock. This money may be spent on capital replacements or improvements, but not to supplement workers' incomes. Italy's Legacoop and Spain's Mondragon multi-sectoral worker-cooperatives have both been able to reach significant scale and demonstrate long-term sustainability. According to a study conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the greatest lesson to be learned from these European experiences is the importance of developing an economically integrated network of cooperatives rather than a single cooperative. The report goes on to say: Social control of investment While there is no single approach or 'blueprint' for social control of investment, many strategies have been proposed. For example, Gar Alperovitz claims many real-world strategies have already emerged to democratize and decentralize the ownership of wealth and capital. In addition to worker cooperatives, Alperovitz highlights ESOPs, credit unions and other cooperative forms, social enterprises, municipally owned utilities and public banks as starting points for what he has termed a "Pluralist Commonwealth". Alternately, David Schweickart proposes a flat-rate tax on capital assets to replace all other business taxes. This "capital assets tax" is collected and invested by the central government. Funds are dispersed throughout society, first to regions and communities on a per capita basis, then to public banks in accordance with past performance, then to those firms with profitable project proposals. Profitable projects that promise increased employment are favored over those that do not. At each level, national, regional and local, legislatures decide what portion of their funds is to be used for public capital expenditures, then send the remainder to the next lower level. Associated with most banks are entrepreneurial divisions, which promote firm expansion and new firm creation. For large (regional or national) enterprises, local investment banks are complemented by regional and national investment banks. These too would be public institutions that receive their funds from the national investment fund. Banks are public, not private, institutions that make grants, not loans, to business enterprises. According to Schweickart, these grants do not represent "free money", since an investment grant counts as an addition to the capital assets of the enterprise, upon which the capital-asset tax must be paid. Thus the capital assets tax functions as an interest rate. A bank grant is essentially a loan requiring interest payments but no repayment of principal. While an economy of worker-self-managed enterprises might tend toward lower unemployment than under capitalism - because banks are mandated to consistently prioritize investment projects that would increase employment - Schweickart notes that it does not guarantee full employment. Social control of investment serves to increase employment. If the market provides insufficient employment, the public sector becomes the employer of last resort. The original formulation of the U.S. Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978 assumed that only in this way could full employment be assured in a market economy. Economic Democracy adopts this approach. Social control of investment then blocks the cyclical unemployment typical of capitalism. The market Hungarian historian Karl Polanyi suggested that market economies should subordinate themselves to larger societal needs. He states that human-beings, the source of labor, do not reproduce for the sole purpose of providing the market with workers. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi says that while modern states and market economies tend to grow under capitalism, both are mutually interdependent for functional development. In order for market economies to be truly prosperous, he claims social constructs must play an essential role. Polanyi claimed that land, labor, and money are all commodified under capitalism, though the inherent purpose of these items was never intended "for sale"—what he labels "fictitious commodities." He says natural resources are "God-given", money is a bookkeeping entry validated by law, and labor is a human prerogative, not a personal obligation to market economies. Schweickart's economic democracy is a form of market economy, at least insofar as the allocation of consumer and capital goods is concerned. Firms buy raw materials and machinery from other firms and sell their products to other enterprises or consumers. "Prices are largely unregulated except by supply and demand, although in some cases price controls or price supports might be in order – as they are deemed in order in most real-world forms of capitalism." Without a price mechanism sensitive to supply and demand, it is extremely difficult for a producer or planner to know what and how much to produce, and which production and marketing methods are the most efficient. Otherwise, it is difficult to motivate producers to be both efficient and innovative. Market competition resolves these problems, to a significant if incomplete degree, in a non-authoritarian, non-bureaucratic fashion. Enterprises still strive to make a profit. However, "profit" in a worker-run firm is calculated differently than under capitalism. For a capitalist firm, labor is counted as a cost. For a worker-run enterprise it is not. Labor is not another "factor of production" on par with land and capital. Labor is the residual claimant. Workers get all that remains, once other costs, including depreciation set asides and the capital assets tax, have been paid. Because of the way workplaces and the investment mechanism are structured, Schweickart's model aims to facilitate fair trade, not free trade, between nations. Under Economic Democracy, there would be virtually no cross-border capital flows. Enterprises themselves would not relocate abroad, since they are democratically controlled by their own workers. Finance capital stays mostly at home, since funds for investment are publicly generated and are mandated by law to be reinvested domestically. "Capital doesn't flow into the country, either, since there are no stocks nor corporate bonds nor businesses to buy. The capital assets of the country are collectively owned – and hence not for sale." According to Michael Howard, "in preserving commodity exchange, a market socialism has greater continuity with the society it displaces than does nonmarket socialism, and thus it is more likely to emerge from capitalism as a result of tendencies generated within it." But Howard also suggested, "one argument against the market in socialist society has been that it blocks progress toward full communism or even leads back to capitalism". From this perspective, nonmarket models of economic democracy have also been proposed. Economic democracy as part of an inclusive democracy Economic democracy is described as an integral component of an inclusive democracy in Takis Fotopoulos' Towards An Inclusive Democracy as a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy that precludes private accumulation of wealth and the institutionalization of privileges for some sections of society, without relying on a mythical post-scarcity state of abundance, or sacrificing freedom of choice. The proposed system aims to meet the basic needs of all citizens (macroeconomic decisions), and secure freedom of choice (microeconomic decisions). Therefore, the system consists of two basic elements: (1) democratic planning, which involves a feedback process between workplace assemblies, demotic assemblies and a confederal assembly, and (2) an artificial market using personal vouchers, which ensures freedom of choice but avoids the adverse effects of real markets. Although David Pepper called this system "a form of money based on the labour theory of value", it is not a money model since vouchers cannot be used as a general medium of exchange and store of wealth. Another distinguishing feature of inclusive democracy is its distinction between basic and non-basic needs. Remuneration is determined separately according to the cost of basic needs, and according to degree of effort for non-basic needs. Inclusive democracy is based on the principle that meeting basic needs is a fundamental human right which is guaranteed to all who are in a physical condition to offer a minimal amount of work. By contrast, participatory economics guarantees that basic needs are satisfied only for public goods or are covered by compassion and by a guaranteed basic income for the unemployed and those who cannot work. Many advocates of participatory economics and Participism have contested this. As part of inclusive democracy, economic democracy is the authority of demos (community) in the economic sphere—which requires equal distribution of economic power. Therefore, all macroeconomic decisions (overall level of production, consumption and investment, amounts of work and leisure implied, technologies to be used and so on) are made collectively and without representation. However, microeconomic decisions are made by the individual production or consumption unit through a proposed system of vouchers. As with the case of direct democracy, economic democracy is only feasible if the participants can easily cooperate. Reform agendas While reform agendas tend to critique the existing system and recommend corrective measures, they do not necessarily suggest alternative models to replace the fundamental structures of capitalism; private ownership of productive resources, the market and wage labor. Social credit Rather than an economic shortfall, many analysts consider the gap between production and purchasing power a social dividend. In this view, credit is a public utility rather than debt to financial centers. Once reinvested in human productive potential, the surplus of societal output could actually increase Gross Domestic Product rather than throttling it, resulting in a more efficient economy, overall. Social Credit is an economic reform movement that originates from theories developed by Scottish engineer Major C. H. Douglas. His aim to make societal improvement the goal of economic systems is reflected in the term "Social Credit", and published in his book, entitled Economic Democracy. In this view, the term "economic democracy" does not mean worker control of industry. A national dividend and a compensated price mechanism are the two most essential components of the Social Credit program. While these measures have never been implemented in their purest form, they have provided a foundation for Social Credit political parties in many countries and for reform agendas that retain the title, "economic democracy". National dividend In his book, Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes likens a "National Dividend" to the game of Monopoly, where all players start with a fair distribution of financial opportunity to succeed, and try to privatize as much as they can as they move around "the commons". Distinguishing the board game from real-world business, Barnes claims that "the top 5 percent of the population owns more property than the remaining 95 percent", providing the smaller minority with an unfair advantage of approximately "$5-trillion" annually, at the beginning of the game. Contrasting "redistribution" of income (or property) with "predistribution", Barnes argues for "propertizing" (without corporately privatizing) "the commons" to spread ownership universally, without taking wealth from some and giving it to others. His suggested mechanism to this end is the establishment of a "Commons Sector", ensuring payment from the Corporate Sector for "the commons" they utilize, and equitably distributing the proceeds for the benefit of contemporary and future generations of society. One real-world example of such reform is in the U.S. State of Alaska, where each citizen receives an annual share of the part of the state's oil revenues via the "Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend". Barnes suggests this model could extend to other states and nations because "we jointly own many valuable assets". As corporate pollution of common assets increased, the permits for such pollution would become more scarce, driving prices for those permits up. "Less pollution would equal more revenue", and over time, "trillions of dollars could flow into an American Permanent Fund". However, none of these proposals aspire to the mandates recommended by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Barnes deemed any such reform unlikely. Thomas Paine originally recommended a National Dividend to compensate for the brutality of British Enclosures, but his idea was never adopted. Monopoly power versus public utility Rather than superficially compensating for legalized inequities, Smith recommends abolishing or redefining property rights laws with particular respect for "the commons". According to Smith exclusive title to natural resources and technologies should be converted to inclusive conditional titles—the condition being that society should collect rental values on all natural resources. Smith suggests the basic principles of monopolization under feudalism were never abandoned, and residues of exclusive feudal property rights restrict the potential efficiency of capitalism in Western cultures. He estimated that roughly 60 percent of American capital is little more than capitalized values of unearned wealth. He proposed that elimination of these monopoly values would double economic efficiency, maintain quality of life, and reduce working hours by half. Wasteful monetary flows could be stopped only by eliminating all methods of monopolization typical in Western economies. Smith divided "primary (feudal) monopoly" into four general categories: banking; land; technology and communications. He listed three general categories of "secondary (modern) monopoly"; insurance, law, health care. Smith further claimed that converting these exclusive entitlements to inclusive human rights would minimize battles for market share, thereby eliminating most offices and staff needed to maintain monopoly structures, and stop the wars generated to protect them. Dissolving roughly half the economic activity of a monopoly system would reduce the costs of common resources by roughly half, and significantly minimize the most influential factors of poverty. In Smith's view, most taxes should be eliminated, and productive enterprise should be privately owned and managed. Inventors should be paid well and all technology placed in the public domain. Crucial services currently monopolized through licensing should be legislated as human rights. Smith envisioned a balanced economy under a socially owned banking commons within an inclusive society with full and equal rights for all. Federated regions collect resource rents on land and technology to a social fund to operate governments and care for social needs. Socially owned banks provide finance capital by creating debt-free money for social infrastructure and industry. Rental values return to society through expenditure on public infrastructures. Local labor is trained and employed to build and maintain water systems, sewers, roads, communication systems, railroads, ports, airports, post offices, and education systems. Purchasing power circulates regionally, as labor spends wages in consumption and governments spend resource rent and banking profits to maintain essential services. According to Smith, all monetary systems, including money markets, should function within fractional-reserve banking. Financial capital should be the total savings of all citizens, balanced by primary-created money to fill any shortfall, or its destruction through increased reserve requirements to eliminate any surplus. Adjustments of required reserves should facilitate the balance between building with socially created money or savings. Any shortage of savings within a socially owned banking system should be alleviated by simply printing it. Cooperatives A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise. By various names, cooperatives play an essential role in all forms of Economic Democracy. Classified as either consumer cooperatives or worker cooperatives, the cooperative business model is fundamental to the interests of economic democracy. According to the International Cooperative Alliance's Statement on the Cooperative Identity, "cooperatives are democratic organizations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary cooperatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and cooperatives at other levels are also organized in a democratic manner." Worker cooperatives According to the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives: "Worker cooperatives are business entities that are owned and controlled by their members, the people who work in them. The two central characteristics of worker cooperatives are: 1) workers invest in and own the business and (2) decision-making is democratic, generally adhering to the principle of one worker-one vote." Worker cooperatives occupy multiple sectors and industries in the United States, mostly in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Upper Midwest, totaling 300 democratic workplaces in the United States, employing over 3,500 people and generating over $400 million in annual revenues. While a few are larger enterprises, most are small. Growing steadily between 1990 and 2010, technology and home health care experienced most of the recent increase. Worker cooperatives generally employ an industrial model called workplace democracy, which rejects the "master-servant relationship" implicit in the traditional employment contract. According to Wilkinson and Pickett, neither ownership or participation alone are sufficient to establish democracy in the workplace. "[M]any share-ownership schemes amount to little more than incentive schemes, intended to make employees more compliant with management and sometimes to provide a nest-egg for retirement... To make a reliable difference to company performance, share-ownership has to be combined with more participative management methods." Dahl further argued that self-governing enterprises should not be confused with other systems they might resemble: In worker cooperatives, net income is called surplus instead of profit and is distributed among the members based on hours worked, seniority, or other criteria. In a worker cooperative, workers own their jobs, and therefore have a direct stake in the local environment and the power to conduct business in ways that benefit the community rather than destroying it. Some worker cooperatives maintain what is known as a “multiple bottom line”, evaluating success not merely in terms of net income, but also by factors like their sustainability as a business, their contribution to the community, and the happiness and longevity of their workers. Worker-control can take many forms depending on the size and type of the business. Approaches to decision-making include: an elected board of directors, elected managers, management job roles, no management at all, consensus, majority vote, or combinations of the above. Participation in decision-making becomes the responsibility and privilege of each member. In one variation, workers usually invest money when they begin working. Each member owns one share, which provides its owner with one vote in company decision-making. While membership is not a requirement of employment, only employees can become members. According to Kenneth W. Stikkers, the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain have achieved a previously unknown level of economic democracy. Established in 1956, Mondragon has since become an economic model that transcends the capitalist-socialist dichotomy and thereby helps us to imagine creative solutions to current economic problems. Economist Richard D. Wolff argues that Mondragon is an example of "a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production." The idea of economic democracy through worker ownership on a national scale has been argued by economist Tom Winters, who states that "building a cooperative economy is one small step on the journey to reclaiming the wealth we all collectively create." Consumer cooperatives A consumers' cooperative is owned by its customers for their mutual benefit. Oriented towards service rather than profit, consumers often provide capital to launch or purchase the enterprise. In practice, consumer cooperatives price goods and services at competitive market rates. The co-op returns profits to the consumer/owner according to a formula instead of paying a separate investor group. In his book, From Mondragon To America, Greg MacLeod argues that "in consumer cooperatives where the customer-members own the capital and the employees are subject to capital, the normal dynamic is the adversarial relationship of labor to capital. Sometimes the result is strikes of labor against management." In some cooperatives, however, consumer/owners are workers as well. For example, Mondragon has developed a large "hybrid" cooperative which sells groceries and furniture in Spain. Consumer cooperatives vary in organization and operations, but typically follow the Rochdale Principles. Consumer cooperatives may also form Co-operative Federations. These may take the form of co-operative wholesale societies, through which they collectively purchase goods at wholesale prices and, in some cases, cooperatively own factories. Alternatively, they may be members of Co-operative unions. Consumer cooperatives are very different from "discount clubs," which charge annual fees in exchange for a discount on purchases. The club is not owned or governed by the members and profits go to investors, not to members. Food cooperatives Most food co-ops are consumer cooperatives that specialize in grocery products. Members patronize the store and vote in elections. The members elect a board of directors to make high-level decisions and recruit managers. Food cooperatives were originally established to provide fresh, organic produce as a viable alternative to packaged imports. The ideas of local and slow food production can help local farmers prosper, in addition to providing consumers with fresher products. But the growing ubiquity of organic food products in corporate stores testifies to broadening consumer awareness, and to the dynamics of global marketing. For example, associated with national and international cooperative communities, Portland Oregon cooperatives manage to survive market competition with corporate franchise. As Lee Lancaster, financial manager for Food Front, states, "cooperatives are potentially one democratic economic model that could help guide business decisions toward meeting human needs while honoring the needs of society and nature". He admits, however, it is difficult to maintain collaboration among cooperatives while also avoiding integration that typically results in centralized authority. Regional trading currencies According to Smith, "Currency is only the representation of wealth produced by combining land (resources), labor, and industrial capital". He claimed that no country was free when another country has such leverage over its entire economy. But by combining their resources, Smith claimed that developing nations have all three of these foundations of wealth: Smith further explained that developed countries need resources from the developing world as much as developing countries need finance capital and technology from the developed world. Aside from the superior military power of the imperial centers, the undeveloped world actually has superior bargaining leverage. With independent trading currencies, developing countries could barter their resources to the developed world for the latest industrial technologies. Barter avoids "hard money monopolization" and the unequal trade between weak and strong nations that result. Smith suggested that barter was how Germany resolved many financial difficulties "put in place to strangle her", and that "World Wars I and II settled that trade dispute". He claimed that their intentions of exclusive entitlement were clearly exposed when the imperial centers resorted to military force to prevent such barter and maintain monopoly control of others' resources. Democratizing workplaces and distributing productive assets The Workplace as a political entity to be democratized Workplace democracy has been cited as a possible solution to the problems that arise from excluding employees from decision-making such as low-employee morale, employee alienation, and low employee engagement. Political theorist Isabelle Ferreras argues that there exists “a great contradiction between the democratic nature of our times and the reality of the work experience.” She argues that the modern corporation's two basic inputs, capital and labor, are treated in radically different ways. Capital owners of a firm wield power within a system of shareholder democracy that allocates voice democratically according to how much capital investment they place in the firm. Labor, on the other hand, rarely benefits from a system to voice their concerns within the firm. She argues that firms are more than just economic organizations especially given the power that they wield over people's livelihoods, environment, and rights. Rather, Ferreras holds that firms are best understood as political entities. And as political entities “it is crucial that firms be made compatible with the democratic commitments of our nations.” Germany and to a lesser extent the broader European Union have experimented with a way of workplace democracy known as Co-determination, a system that allows workers to elect representatives that sit on the board of directors of a company. Common criticisms of workplace democracy include that democratic workplaces are less efficient than hierarchical workplace, that managers are best equipped to make company decisions since they are better educated and aware of the broader business context. Creating a widespread distribution of productive assets One of the biggest criticisms against capitalism is that it concentrates economic and, as a result, political power in a few hands. Theorists of economic democracy have argued that one solution to this unequal concentration of power is to create mechanisms that distribute ownership of productive assets across the entire population. In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, John Rawls argued that only two systems could embody the main features of his principles of justice: liberal socialism or a property-owning democracy. Within a property-owning democracy, Rawls envisioned widespread use of worker-owned cooperatives, partial-employee ownership of firms, systems to redistribute one's assets after death to prevent the accumulation of wealth, as well as a strong system of asset-based redistribution that encourages workers to own productive assets. Operating under the idea that making ownership more widespread leads to more equitable outcomes various proposals of asset-based welfare and asset-redistribution have been conceived. Individualistic and liberal asset-based welfare strategies such as the United Kingdom's Child Trust Fund or the United States Individual Development Account aimed to help people save money so that it could be invested on education, home-ownership, or entrepreneurship. More experimental and left-leaning proposals include worker owned cooperatives, ESOPS, or Roemer's coupon socialism. Critiques Ludwig von Mises argued that ownership and control over the means of production belongs to private firms and can only be sustained by means of consumer choice, exercised daily in the marketplace. "The capitalistic social order", he claimed, therefore "is an economic democracy in the strictest sense of the word". Critics of Mises claim that consumers only vote on the value of the product when they make a purchase—they are not participating in the management of firms, or voting on how the profits are to be used. See also Active labour market policies Citizen's dividend Co-determination Cooperative economics Co-operative Democratic capitalism Democratic socialism Employee stock ownership Energy democracy Guaranteed minimum income Libertarian socialism List of worker cooperatives Market socialism Profit sharing Progressive utilization theory Social democracy Social dividend Social economy Social ownership Worker co-operative Worker representation on corporate boards of directors Workers' control Workers' self-management Notes References Articles E McGaughey, 'Economic democracy: a brief history, and the laws that make it' (2023) SSRN E McGaughey, 'Economic Democracy in the 21st Century: The Vote in Labour, Capital and Public Services' (2020) Journal of Comparative Law E McGaughey, 'Will Robots Automate Your Job Away? Full Employment, Basic Income, and Economic Democracy' (2018) SSRN, part 2(3) Books De Magalhães, L. M., & Ferrero, L. (2010). Political parties and the tax level in the American states: two regression discontinuity designs (No. 10/614). Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK. Democracy Economic systems Market socialism Worker cooperatives Fair trade

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all socio-political power is held by a dictator, who also controls the national politics and the peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and by friendly private mass communications media. The totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as the political economy of the country, the system of education, the arts, the sciences, and the private-life morality of the citizens. In the exercise of socio-political power, the difference between a totalitarian régime of government and an authoritarian régime of government is one of degree; whereas totalitarianism features a charismatic dictator and a fixed worldview, authoritarianism only features a dictator who holds power for the sake of holding power, and is supported, either jointly or individually, by a military junta and by the socio-economic elites who are the ruling class of the country. Definitions Contemporary background Modern political science catalogues three régimes of government: (i) the democratic, (ii) the authoritarian, and (iii) the totalitarian. Varying by political culture, the functional characteristics of the totalitarian régime of government are: political repression of all opposition (individual and collective); a cult of personality about The Leader; official economic interventionism (controlled wages and prices); official censorship of all mass communication media (the press, textbooks, cinema, television, radio, internet); official mass surveillance-policing of public places; and state terrorism. In the essay "Democide in Totalitarian States: Mortacracies and Megamurderers" (1994) the American political scientist Rudolph Rummel said that: There is much confusion about what is meant by totalitarian in the literature, including the denial that such [political] systems even exist. I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that is unlimited, [either] constitutionally or by countervailing powers in society (such as by a Church, rural gentry, labor unions, or regional powers); is not held responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections; and employs its unlimited power to control all aspects of society, including the family, religion, education, business, private property, and social relationships. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. Totalitarianism is, then, a political ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), Marxism–Leninism as in former East Germany, and Nazism. Even revolutionary Muslim Iran, since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978–79 has been totalitarian—here totalitarianism was married to Muslim fundamentalism. In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power. State socialism, Communism, Nazism, fascism, and Muslim fundamentalism have been some of its recent raiments. Totalitarian governments have been its agency. The state, with its international legal sovereignty and independence, has been its base. As will be pointed out, mortacracy is the result. Degree of control In exercising the power of government upon a society, the application of an official dominant ideology differentiates the worldview of the totalitarian régime from the worldview of the authoritarian régime, which is "only concerned with political power, and, as long as [government power] is not contested, [the authoritarian government] gives society a certain degree of liberty." Having no ideology to propagate, the politically secular authoritarian government "does not attempt to change the world and human nature", whereas the "totalitarian government seeks to completely control the thoughts and actions of its citizens", by way of an official "totalist ideology, a [political] party reinforced by a secret police, and monopolistic control of industrial mass society." Historical background From the right-wing perspective, the social phenomenon of political totalitarianism is a product of Modernism, which the philosopher Karl Popper said originated from humanist philosophy; from the Republic (res publica) proposed by Plato in Ancient Greece, from Hegel's conception of the State as a polity of peoples, and from the political economy of Karl Marx in the 19th century—yet historians and philosophers of those periods dispute the historiographic accuracy of Popper's 20th-century interpretation and delineation of the historical origins of totalitarianism, because the ancient Greek philosopher Plato did not invent the modern State. In the early 20th century, Giovanni Gentile proposed Italian Fascism as a political ideology with a philosophy that is "totalitarian, and [that] the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unity inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people". In 1920s Germany, during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt integrated Gentile's Fascist philosophy of united national purpose to the supreme-leader ideology of the Führerprinzip. In the mid 20th-century, the German academics Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer traced the origin of totalitarianism to the Age of Reason (17th–18th centuries), especially to the anthropocentrist proposition that: "Man has become the master of the world, a master unbound by any links to Nature, society, and history", which excludes the intervention of supernatural beings to earthly politics of government. American historian William Rubinstein wrote that:The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the Jewish Holocaust, but also comprising the mass murders and purges of the Communist world, other mass killings carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies, and also the Armenian genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of World War I, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots. In the essay "The 'Dark Forces', the Totalitarian Model, and Soviet History" (1987), by J.F. Hough, and in the book The Totalitarian Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution (2019), by Alexander Riley, the historians said that the Russian Marxist revolutionary Lenin was the first politician to establish a sovereign state of the totalitarian model. As the Duce leading the Italian people to the future, Benito Mussolini said that his dictatorial régime of government made Fascist Italy (1922–1943) the representative Totalitarian State: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Likewise, in The Concept of the Political (1927), the Nazi jurist Schmitt used the term der Totalstaat (the Total State) to identify, describe, and establish the legitimacy of a German totalitarian state led by a supreme leader. After the Second World War (1937–1945), U.S. political discourse (domestic and foreign) included the concepts (ideologic and political) and the terms totalitarian, totalitarianism, and totalitarian model. In the post-war U.S. of the 1950s, to politically discredit the anti-fascism of the Second World War as misguided foreign policy, McCarthyite politicians claimed that Left-wing totalitarianism was an existential threat to Western civilisation, and so facilitated the creation of the American national security state to execute the anti-communist Cold War (1945–1989) that was fought by client-state proxies of the US and the USSR. Historiography Kremlinology During the Russo–American Cold War (1945–1989), the academic field of Kremlinology (analysing politburo policy politics) produced historical and policy analyses dominated by the totalitarian model of the USSR as a police state controlled by the absolute power of the supreme leader Stalin, who heads a monolithic, centralised hierarchy of government. The study of the internal politics of the politburo crafting policy at the Kremlin produced two schools of historiographic interpretation of Cold War history: (i) traditionalist Kremlinology and (ii) revisionist Kremlinology. Traditionalist Kremlinologists worked with and for the totalitarian model and produced interpretations of Kremlin politics and policies that supported the police-state version of Communist Russia. The revisionist Kremlinologists presented alternative interpretations of Kremlin politics and reported the effects of politburo policies upon Soviet society, civil and military. Despite the limitations of police-state historiography, revisionist Kremlinologists said that the old image of the Stalinist USSR of the 1950s—a totalitarian state intent upon world domination—was oversimplified and inaccurate, because the death of Stalin changed Soviet society. After the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, most revisionist Kremlinologists worked the national archives of ex–Communist states, especially the State Archive of the Russian Federation about Soviet-period Russia. Totalitarian model for policy In the 1950s, the political scientist Carl Joachim Friedrich said that Communist states, such as Soviet Russia and Red China, were countries systematically controlled with the five features of the totalitarian model of government by a supreme leader: (i) an official dominant ideology that includes a cult of personality about the leader, (ii) control of all civil and military weapons, (iii) control of the public and the private mass communications media, (iv) the use of state terrorism to police the populace, and (v) a political party of mass membership who perpetually re-elect The Leader. In the 1960s, the revisionist Kremlinologists researched the organisations and studied the policies of the relatively autonomous bureaucracies that influenced the crafting of high-level policy for governing Soviet society in the USSR. Revisionist Kremlinologists, such as J. Arch Getty and Lynne Viola, transcended the interpretational limitations of the totalitarian model by recognising and reporting that the Soviet government, the communist party, and the civil society of the USSR had greatly changed upon the death of Stalin. The revisionist social history indicated that the social forces of Soviet society had compelled the Government of the USSR to adjust public policy to the actual political economy of a Soviet society composed of pre–War and post–War generations of people with different perceptions of the utility of Communist economics for all the Russias. Hence, Russian modern history had outdated the totalitarian model that was the post–Stalinist perception of the police-state USSR of the 1950s. Politics of historical interpretation The historiography of the USSR and of the Soviet period of Russian history is in two schools of research and interpretation: (i) the traditionalist school of historiography and (ii) the revisionist school of historiography. Traditionalist-school historians characterise themselves as objective reporters of the claimed totalitarianism inherent to Marxism, to Communism, and to the political nature of Communist states, such as the USSR. Moreover, traditionalist historians criticise the politically liberal bias they perceive in the predominance of revisionist historians in academic publishing, and claim that revisionist-school historians also over-populate the faculties of colleges, universities, and think tanks. Revisionist-school historians criticise the traditionalist school's concentration upon the police-state aspects of Cold War history, and so produce anti-communist history biased towards a right-wing interpretation of the documentary facts, thus, the revisionist school dismiss traditionalist historians as the being the politically reactionary faculty of the HUAC school of scholarship about the Communist Party USA. New semantics In 1980, in a book review of How the Soviet Union is Governed (1979), by J.F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, William Zimmerman said that "the Soviet Union has changed substantially. Our knowledge of the Soviet Union has changed, as well. We all know that the traditional paradigm [of the totalitarian model] no longer satisfies [our ignorance], despite several efforts, primarily in the early 1960s (the directed society, totalitarianism without police terrorism, the system of conscription) to articulate an acceptable variant [of Communist totalitarianism]. We have come to realize that models which were, in effect, offshoots of totalitarian models do not provide good approximations of post–Stalinist reality [of the USSR]." In a book review of Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura (2019), by Ahmed Saladdin, Michael Scott Christofferson said that Hannah Arendt's interpretation of the USSR after Stalin was her attempt to intellectually distance her work from "the Cold War misuse of the concept [of the origins of totalitarianism]" as anti-Communist propaganda. In the essay, "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word" (2010), the historian John Connelly said that totalitarianism is a useful word, but that the old 1950s theory about totalitarianism is defunct among scholars, because “The word is as functional now as it was fifty years ago. It means the kind of régime that existed in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the Soviet satellites, Communist China, and maybe Fascist Italy, where the word originated. . . . Who are we to tell Václav Havel or Adam Michnik that they were fooling themselves when they perceived their rulers as totalitarian? Or, for that matter, any of the millions of former subjects of Soviet-type rule who use the local equivalents of the Czech [word] totalita to describe the systems they lived under before 1989? [Totalitarianism] is a useful word, and everyone knows what it means as a general referent. Problems arise when people confuse the useful descriptive term with the old 'theory' from the 1950s." In Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (2022), the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way said that nascent revolutionary régimes usually became totalitarian régimes if not destroyed with a military invasion. Such a revolutionary régime begins as a social revolution independent of the existing social structures of the state (not political succession, election to office, or a military coup d'état) and produces a dictatorship with three functional characteristics: (i) a cohesive ruling class comprising the military and the political élites, (ii) a strong and loyal coercive apparatus of police and military forces to suppress dissent, and (iii) the destruction of rival political parties, organisations, and independent centres of socio-political power. Moreover, the unitary functioning of the characteristics of totalitarianism allow a totalitarian government to perdure against economic crises (internal and external), large-scale failures of policy, mass social-discontent, and political pressure from other countries. Some totalitarian one-party states were established through coups orchestrated by military officers loyal to a vanguard party that advanced socialist revolution, such as the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (1962), Syrian Arab Republic (1963), and Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1978). Politics Early usages Italy In 1923, in the early reign of Mussolini's government (1922–1943), the anti-fascist academic Giovanni Amendola was the first Italian public intellectual to define and describe Totalitarianism as a régime of government wherein the supreme leader personally exercises total power (political, military, economic, social) as Il Duce of The State. That Italian fascism is a political system with an ideological, utopian worldview unlike the realistic politics of the personal dictatorship of a man who holds power for the sake of holding power. Later, the theoretician of Italian Fascism Giovanni Gentile ascribed politically positive meanings to the ideological terms totalitarianism and totalitarian in defence of Duce Mussolini's legal, illegal, and legalistic social engineering of Italy. As ideologues, the intellectual Gentile and the politician Mussolini used the term totalitario to identify and describe the ideological nature of the societal structures (government, social, economic, political) and the practical goals (economic, geopolitical, social) of the new Fascist Italy (1922–1943), which was the "total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals." In proposing the totalitarian society of Italian Fascism, Gentile defined and described a civil society wherein totalitarian ideology (subservience to the state) determined the public sphere and the private sphere of the lives of the Italian people. That to achieve the Fascist utopia in the imperial future, Italian totalitarianism must politicise human existence into subservience to the state, which Mussolini summarised with the epigram: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." Hannah Arendt, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, contended that Mussolini's dictatorship was not a totalitarian regime until 1938. Arguing that one of the key characteristics of a totalitarian movement was its ability to garner mass mobilization, Arendt wrote: "While all political groups depend upon proportionate strength, totalitarian movements depend on the sheer force of numbers to such an extent that totalitarian regimes seem impossible, even under otherwise favorable circumstances, in countries with relatively small populations.... [E]ven Mussolini, who was so fond of the term "totalitarian state," did not attempt to establish a full-fledged totalitarian regime and contented himself with dictatorship and one-party rule." For example, Victor Emmanuel III still reigned as a figurehead and helped play a role in the dismissal of Mussolini in 1943. Also, the Catholic Church was allowed to independently exercise its religious authority in Vatican City per the 1929 Lateran Treaty, under the leadership of Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). Britain One of the first people to use the term totalitarianism in the English language was Austrian writer Franz Borkenau in his 1938 book The Communist International, in which he commented that it united the Soviet and German dictatorships more than it divided them. The label totalitarian was twice affixed to Nazi Germany during Winston Churchill's speech of 5 October 1938 before the House of Commons, in opposition to the Munich Agreement, by which France and Great Britain consented to Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency. In a radio address two weeks later, Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to "a Communist or a Nazi tyranny." Spain José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones, the leader of the historic Spanish reactionary party called the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA), declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity" and went on to say: "Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it." General Francisco Franco was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and CEDA was dissolved in April 1937. Later, Gil-Robles went into exile. Politically matured by having fought and been wounded and survived the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), in the essay "Why I Write" (1946), the socialist George Orwell said, "the Spanish war and other events in 1936–37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." That future totalitarian régimes would spy upon their societies and use the mass communications media to perpetuate their dictatorships, that "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." USSR In the aftermath of the Second World War (1937–1945), in the lecture series (1945) and book (1946) titled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, the British historian E. H. Carr said that "the trend away from individualism and towards totalitarianism is everywhere unmistakable" in the decolonising countries of Eurasia. That revolutionary Marxism–Leninism was the most successful type of totalitarianism, as proved by the USSR's rapid industrialisation (1929–1941) and the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) that defeated Nazi Germany. That, despite those achievements in social engineering and warfare, in dealing with the countries of the Communist bloc only the "blind and incurable" ideologue could ignore the Communist régimes' trend towards police-state totalitarianism in their societies. Cold War In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the political scientist Hannah Arendt said that, in their times in the early 20th century, corporate Nazism and soviet Communism were new forms of totalitarian government, not updated versions of the old tyrannies of a military or a corporate dictatorship. That the human emotional comfort of political certainty is the source of the mass appeal of revolutionary totalitarian régimes, because the totalitarian worldview gives psychologically comforting and definitive answers about the complex socio-political mysteries of the past, of the present, and of the future; thus did Nazism propose that all history is the history of ethnic conflict, of the survival of the fittest race; and Marxism–Leninism proposes that all history is the history of class conflict, of the survival of the fittest social class. That upon the believers' acceptance of the universal applicability of totalitarian ideology, the Nazi revolutionary and the Communist revolutionary then possess the simplistic moral certainty with which to justify all other actions by the State, either by an appeal to historicism (Law of History) or by an appeal to nature, as expedient actions necessary to establishing an authoritarian state apparatus. True belief In The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), Eric Hoffer said that political mass movements, such as Italian Fascism (1922–1943), German Nazism (1933–1945), and Russian Stalinism (1929–1953), featured the common political praxis of negatively comparing their totalitarian society as culturally superior to the morally decadent societies of the democratic countries of Western Europe. That such mass psychology indicates that participating in and then joining a political mass movement offers people the prospect of a glorious future, that such membership in a community of political belief is an emotional refuge for people with few accomplishments in their real lives, in both the public sphere and in the private sphere. In the event, the true believer is assimilated into a collective body of true believers who are mentally protected with "fact-proof screens from reality" drawn from the official texts of the totalitarian ideology. Collaborationism In "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" (2018) the historian Paul Hanebrink said that Hitler's assumption of power in Germany in 1933 frightened Christians into anti-communism, because for European Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike, the new postwar 'culture war' crystallized as a struggle against Communism. Throughout the European interwar period (1918–1939), right-wing totalitarian régimes indoctrinated Christians to demonize the Communist régime in Russia as the apotheosis of secular materialism and [as] a militarized threat to worldwide Christian social and moral order". That throughout Europe, the Christians who became anti-communist totalitarians perceived Communism and communist régimes of government as an existential threat to the moral order of their respective societies; and collaborated with Fascists and Nazis in the idealistic hope that anti-communism would restore the societies of Europe to their root Christian culture. Totalitarian model In the U.S. geopolitics of the late 1950s, the Cold War concepts and the terms totalitarianism, totalitarian, and totalitarian model, presented in Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (1956), by Carl Joachim Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, became common usages in the foreign-policy discourse of the U.S. Subsequently established, the totalitarian model became the analytic and interpretational paradigm for Kremlinology, the academic study of the monolithic police-state USSR. The Kremlinologists analyses of the internal politics (policy and personality) of the politburo crafting policy (national and foreign) yielded strategic intelligence for dealing with the USSR. Moreover, the U.S. also used the totalitarian model when dealing with fascist totalitarian régimes, such as that of a banana republic country. As anti–Communist political scientists, Friedrich and Brzezinski described and defined totalitarianism with the monolithic totalitarian model of six interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics: Elaborate guiding ideology. One-party state State terrorism Monopoly control of weapons Monopoly control of the mass communications media Centrally directed and controlled planned economy Criticism of the totalitarian model As traditionalist historians, Friedrich and Brzezinski said that the totalitarian régimes of government in the USSR (1917), Fascist Italy (1922–1943), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945) originated from the political discontent caused by the socio-economic aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918), which rendered impotent the government of Weimar Germany (1918–1933) to resist, counter, and quell left-wing and right-wing revolutions of totalitarian temper. Revisionist historians noted the historiographic limitations of the totalitarian-model interpretation of Soviet and Russian history, because Friedrich and Brzezinski did not take account of the actual functioning of the Soviet social system, neither as a political entity (the USSR) nor as a social entity (Soviet civil society), which could be understood in terms of socialist class struggle among the professional élites (political, academic, artistic, scientific, military) seeking upward mobility into the nomenklatura, the ruling class of the USSR. That the political economics of the politburo allowed measured executive power to regional authorities for them to implement policy was interpreted by revisionist historians as evidence that a totalitarian régime adapts the political economy to include new economic demands from civil society; whereas traditionalist historians interpreted the politico-economic collapse of the USSR to prove that the totalitarian régime of economics failed because the politburo did not adapt the political economy to include actual popular participation in the Soviet economy. The historian of Nazi Germany, Karl Dietrich Bracher said that the totalitarian typology developed by Friedrich and Brzezinski was an inflexible model, for not including the revolutionary dynamics of bellicose people committed to realising the violent revolution required to establish totalitarianism in a sovereign state. That the essence of totalitarianism is total control to remake every aspect of civil society using a universal ideology—which is interpreted by an authoritarian leader—to create a collective national identity by merging civil society into the State. Given that the supreme leaders of the Communist, the Fascist, and the Nazi total states did possess government administrators, Bracher said that a totalitarian government did not necessarily require an actual supreme leader, and could function by way of collective leadership. The American historian Walter Laqueur agreed that Bracher's totalitarian typology more accurately described the functional reality of the politburo than did the totalitarian typology proposed by Friedrich and Brzezinski. In Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968) the political scientist Raymond Aron said that for a régime of government to be considered totalitarian it can be described and defined with the totalitarian model of five interlocking, mutually supporting characteristics: A one-party state where the ruling party has a monopoly on all political activity. A state ideology upheld by the ruling party that is given official status as the only authority. A state monopoly on information; control of the mass communications media to broadcast the official truth. A state-controlled economy featuring major economic entities under state control. An ideological police-state terror; criminalisation of political, economic, and professional activities. Post–Cold War Laure Neumayer posited that "despite the disputes over its heuristic value and its normative assumptions, the concept of totalitarianism made a vigorous return to the political and academic fields at the end of the Cold War". In the 1990s, François Furet made a comparative analysis and used the term totalitarian twins to link Nazism and Stalinism. Eric Hobsbawm criticised Furet for his temptation to stress the existence of a common ground between two systems with different ideological roots. In Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion, Žižek wrote that "[t]he liberating effect" of General Augusto Pinochet's arrest "was exceptional", as "the fear of Pinochet dissipated, the spell was broken, the taboo subjects of torture and disappearances became the daily grist of the news media; the people no longer just whispered, but openly spoke about prosecuting him in Chile itself". Saladdin Ahmed cited Hannah Arendt as stating that "the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term after Stalin's death", writing that "this was the case in General August Pinochet's Chile, yet it would be absurd to exempt it from the class of totalitarian regimes for that reason alone". Saladdin posited that while Chile under Pinochet had no "official ideology", there was one man who ruled Chile from "behind the scenes", "none other than Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism and the most influential teacher of the Chicago Boys, was Pinochet's adviser". In this sense, Saladdin criticised the totalitarian concept because it was only being applied to "opposing ideologies" and it was not being applied to liberalism. In the early 2010s, Richard Shorten, Vladimir Tismăneanu, and Aviezer Tucker posited that totalitarian ideologies can take different forms in different political systems but all of them focus on utopianism, scientism, or political violence. They posit that Nazism and Stalinism both emphasised the role of specialisation in modern societies and they also saw polymathy as a thing of the past, and they also stated that their claims were supported by statistics and science, which led them to impose strict ethical regulations on culture, use psychological violence, and persecute entire groups. Their arguments have been criticised by other scholars due to their partiality and anachronism. Juan Francisco Fuentes treats totalitarianism as an "invented tradition" and he believes that the notion of "modern despotism" is a "reverse anachronism"; for Fuentes, "the anachronistic use of totalitarian/totalitarianism involves the will to reshape the past in the image and likeness of the present". Other studies try to link modern technological changes to totalitarianism. According to Shoshana Zuboff, the economic pressures of modern surveillance capitalism are driving the intensification of connection and monitoring online with spaces of social life becoming open to saturation by corporate actors, directed at the making of profit and/or the regulation of action. Toby Ord believed that George Orwell's fears of totalitarianism constituted a notable early precursor to modern notions of anthropogenic existential risk, the concept that a future catastrophe could permanently destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life due in part to technological changes, creating a permanent technological dystopia. Ord said that Orwell's writings show that his concern was genuine rather than just a throwaway part of the fictional plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1949, Orwell wrote that "[a] ruling class which could guard against (four previously enumerated sources of risk) would remain in power permanently". That same year, Bertrand Russell wrote that "modern techniques have made possible a new intensity of governmental control, and this possibility has been exploited very fully in totalitarian states". In 2016, The Economist described China's developed Social Credit System under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration, to screen and rank its citizens based on their personal behavior, as totalitarian. Opponents of China's ranking system say that it is intrusive and it is just another tool which a one-party state can use to control the population. Supporters say that it will transform China into a more civilised and law-abiding society. Shoshana Zuboff considers it instrumentarian rather than totalitarian. North Korea is the only country in East Asia to survive totalitarianism after the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 and handed over to his son Kim Jong-il and grandson Kim Jong-un in 2011, as of today in the 21st century. Other emerging technologies that could empower future totalitarian regimes include brain-reading, contact tracing, and various applications of artificial intelligence. Philosopher Nick Bostrom said that there is a possible trade-off, namely that some existential risks might be mitigated by the establishment of a powerful and permanent world government, and in turn the establishment of such a government could enhance the existential risks which are associated with the rule of a permanent dictatorship. Religious totalitarianism Islamic The Taliban is a totalitarian Sunni Islamist militant group and political movement in Afghanistan that emerged in the aftermath of the Soviet–Afghan War and the end of the Cold War. It governed most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and returned to power in 2021, controlling the entirety of Afghanistan. Features of its totalitarian governance include the imposition of Pashtunwali culture of the majority Pashtun ethnic group as religious law, the exclusion of minorities and non-Taliban members from the government, and extensive violations of women's rights. The Islamic State is a Salafi-Jihadist militant group that was established in 2006 by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi during the Iraqi insurgency, under the name "Islamic State of Iraq". Under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization later changed its name to the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" in 2013. The group espouses a totalitarian ideology that is a fundamentalist hybrid of Global Jihadism, Wahhabism, and Qutbism. Following its territorial expansion in 2014, the group renamed itself as the "Islamic State" and declared itself as a caliphate that sought domination over the Muslim world and established what has been described as a "political-religious totalitarian regime". The quasi-state held significant territory in Iraq and Syria during the course of the Third Iraq War and the Syrian civil war from 2013 to 2019 under the dictatorship of its first Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law. Christian Francoist Spain (1936–1975), under the dictator Francisco Franco, has been characterized as a totalitarian state until at least the 1950s by scholars. Franco was portrayed as a fervent Catholic and a staunch defender of Catholicism, the declared state religion. Civil marriages that had taken place in the Republic were declared null and void unless they had been validated by the Church, along with divorces. Divorce, contraception and abortions were forbidden. According to historian Stanley G. Payne, Franco had more day-to-day power than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin possessed at the respective heights of their power. Payne noted that Hitler and Stalin at least maintained rubber-stamp parliaments, while Franco dispensed with even that formality in the early years of his rule. According to Payne, the lack of even a rubber-stamp parliament made Franco's government "the most purely arbitrary in the world." However, from 1959 to 1974 the "Spanish Miracle" took place under the leadership of technocrats, many of whom were members of Opus Dei and a new generation of politicians that replaced the old Falangist guard. Reforms were implemented in the 1950s and Spain abandoned autarky, reassigning economic authority from the isolationist Falangist movement. This led to massive economic growth that lasted until the mid-1970s, known as the "Spanish miracle". This is comparable to De-Stalinization in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, where Francoist Spain changed from being openly totalitarian to an authoritarian dictatorship with a certain degree of economic freedom. The city of Geneva under John Calvin's leadership has also been characterised as totalitarian by scholars. Revisionist school of Soviet-period history Soviet society after Stalin The death of Stalin in 1953 voided the simplistic totalitarian model of the police-state USSR as the epitome of the totalitarian state. A fact common to the revisionist-school interpretations of the reign of Stalin (1927–1953) was that the USSR was a country with weak social institutions, and that state terrorism against Soviet citizens indicated the political illegitimacy of Stalin's government. That the citizens of the USSR were not devoid of personal agency or of material resources for living, nor were Soviet citizens psychologically atomised by the totalist ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—because "the Soviet political system was chaotic, that institutions often escaped the control of the centre, and that Stalin's leadership consisted, to a considerable extent, in responding, on an ad hoc basis, to political crises as they arose." That the legitimacy of Stalin's régime of government relied upon the popular support of the Soviet citizenry as much as Stalin relied upon state terrorism for their support. That by politically purging Soviet society of anti–Soviet people Stalin created employment and upward social mobility for the post–War generation of working class citizens for whom such socio-economic progress was unavailable before the Russian Revolution (1917–1924). That the people who benefited from Stalin's social engineering became Stalinists loyal to the USSR; thus, the Revolution had fulfilled her promise to those Stalinist citizens and they supported Stalin because of the state terrorism. German Democratic Republic (GDR) In the case of East Germany, (0000) Eli Rubin posited that East Germany was not a totalitarian state but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens. Writing in 1987, Walter Laqueur posited that the revisionists in the field of Soviet history were guilty of confusing popularity with morality and of making highly embarrassing and not very convincing arguments against the concept of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian state. Laqueur stated that the revisionists' arguments with regard to Soviet history were highly similar to the arguments made by Ernst Nolte regarding German history. For Laqueur, concepts such as modernisation were inadequate tools for explaining Soviet history while totalitarianism was not. Laqueur's argument has been criticised by modern "revisionist school" historians such as Paul Buhle, who said that Laqueur wrongly equates Cold War revisionism with the German revisionism; the latter reflected a "revanchist, military-minded conservative nationalism." Moreover, Michael Parenti and James Petras have suggested that the totalitarianism concept has been politically employed and used for anti-communist purposes. Parenti has also analysed how "left anti-communists" attacked the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For Petras, the CIA funded the Congress for Cultural Freedom to attack "Stalinist anti-totalitarianism." Into the 21st century, Enzo Traverso has attacked the creators of the concept of totalitarianism as having invented it to designate the enemies of the West. According to some scholars, calling Joseph Stalin totalitarian instead of authoritarian has been asserted to be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Western self-interest, just as surely as the counterclaim that allegedly debunking the totalitarian concept may be a high-sounding but specious excuse for Russian self-interest. For Domenico Losurdo, totalitarianism is a polysemic concept with origins in Christian theology and applying it to the political sphere requires an operation of abstract schematism which makes use of isolated elements of historical reality to place fascist regimes and the Soviet Union in the dock together, serving the anti-communism of Cold War-era intellectuals rather than reflecting intellectual research. See also List of totalitarian regimes Inverted totalitarianism Totalitarian democracy Guided democracy Illiberal democracy Defective democracy Herrenvolk democracy Ethnic democracy Racial segregation Apartheid Crime of apartheid Settler colonialism Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism Surveillance capitalism List of cults of personality Totalitarian architecture Nazism Fascism Stalinism References Notes Further reading Armstrong, John A. The Politics of Totalitarianism (New York: Random House, 1961). Bernholz, Peter. "Ideocracy and totalitarianism: A formal analysis incorporating ideology", Public Choice 108, 2001, pp. 33–75. Bernholz, Peter. "Ideology, sects, state and totalitarianism. A general theory". In: H. Maier and M. Schaefer (eds.): Totalitarianism and Political Religions, Vol. II (Routledge, 2007), pp. 246–270. Borkenau, Franz, The Totalitarian Enemy (London: Faber and Faber 1940). Bracher, Karl Dietrich, "The Disputed Concept of Totalitarianism," pp. 11–33 from Totalitarianism Reconsidered edited by Ernest A. Menze (Kennikat Press, 1981) . Congleton, Roger D. "Governance by true believers: Supreme duties with and without totalitarianism." Constitutional Political Economy 31.1 (2020): 111–141. online Connelly, John. "Totalitarianism: Defunct Theory, Useful Word" Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11#4 (2010) 819–835. online. Curtis, Michael. Totalitarianism (1979) online Devlin, Nicholas. "Hannah Arendt and Marxist Theories of Totalitarianism." Modern Intellectual History (2021): 1–23 online. Diamond, Larry. "The road to digital unfreedom: The threat of postmodern totalitarianism." Journal of Democracy 30.1 (2019): 20–24. excerpt Fitzpatrick, Sheila, and Michael Geyer, eds. Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Friedrich, Carl and Z. K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 1st ed. 1956, 2nd ed. 1965). Gach, Nataliia. "From totalitarianism to democracy: Building learner autonomy in Ukrainian higher education." Issues in Educational Research 30.2 (2020): 532–554. online Gleason, Abbott. Totalitarianism: The Inner History Of The Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), . Gray, Phillip W. Totalitarianism: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2023), . Gregor, A. Totalitarianism and political religion (Stanford University Press, 2020). Hanebrink, Paul. "European Protestants Between Anti-Communism and Anti-Totalitarianism: The Other Interwar Kulturkampf?" Journal of Contemporary History (July 2018) Vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 622–643 Hermet, Guy, with Pierre Hassner and Jacques Rupnik, Totalitarismes (Paris: Éditions Economica, 1984). Jainchill, Andrew, and Samuel Moyn. "French democracy between totalitarianism and solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and revisionist historiography." Journal of Modern History 76.1 (2004): 107–154. online Joscelyne, Sophie. "Norman Mailer and American Totalitarianism in the 1960s." Modern Intellectual History 19.1 (2022): 241–267 online. Keller, Marcello Sorce. "Why is Music so Ideological, Why Do Totalitarian States Take It So Seriously", Journal of Musicological Research, XXVI (2007), no. 2–3, pp. 91–122. Kirkpatrick, Jeane, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and reason in politics (London: Simon & Schuster, 1982). Laqueur, Walter, The Fate of the Revolution Interpretations of Soviet History From 1917 to the Present (London: Collier Books, 1987) . Menze, Ernest, ed. Totalitarianism reconsidered (1981) online essays by experts Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (Yale University Press, 1944). Murray, Ewan. Shut Up: Tale of Totalitarianism (2005). Nicholls, A.J. "Historians and Totalitarianism: The Impact of German Unification." Journal of Contemporary History 36.4 (2001): 653–661. Patrikeeff, Felix. "Stalinism, Totalitarian Society and the Politics of 'Perfect Control, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, (Summer 2003), Vol. 4 Issue 1, pp. 23–46. Payne, Stanley G., A History of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1996). Rak, Joanna, and Roman Bäcker. "Theory behind Russian Quest for Totalitarianism. Analysis of Discursive Swing in Putin's Speeches." Communist and Post-Communist Studies 53.1 (2020): 13–26 online. Roberts, David D. Totalitarianism (John Wiley & Sons, 2020). Rocker, Rudolf, Nationalism and Culture (Covici-Friede, 1937). Sartori, Giovanni, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, N.J: Chatham House, 1987). Sauer, Wolfgang. "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2 (December 1967): 404–424. online. Saxonberg, Steven. Pre-modernity, totalitarianism and the non-banality of evil: A comparison of Germany, Spain, Sweden and France (Springer Nature, 2019). Schapiro, Leonard. Totalitarianism (London: The Pall Mall Press, 1972). Selinger, William. "The politics of Arendtian historiography: European federation and the origins of totalitarianism." Modern Intellectual History 13.2 (2016): 417–446. Skotheim, Robert Allen. Totalitarianism and American social thought (1971) online Talmon, J. L., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1952). Traverso, Enzo, Le Totalitarisme : Le XXe siècle en débat (Paris: Poche, 2001). Tuori, Kaius. "Narratives and Normativity: Totalitarianism and Narrative Change in the European Legal Tradition after World War II." Law and History Review 37.2 (2019): 605–638 online. Žižek, Slavoj, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (London: Verso, 2001). online External links 20th century in politics 21st century in politics Authoritarianism Political philosophy Political science terminology Political theories Political extremism

Politicisation

Politicisation (also politicization; see English spelling differences) is a concept in political science and theory used to explain how ideas, entities or collections of facts are given a political tone or character, and are consequently assigned to the ideas and strategies of a particular group or party, thus becoming the subject of contestation. Politicisation has been described as compromising objectivity, and is linked with political polarisation. Conversely, it can have a democratising effect and enhance political choice, and has been shown to improve the responsiveness of supranational institutions such as the European Union. The politicisation of a group is more likely to occur when justifications for political violence are considered acceptable within a society, or in the absence of norms condemning violence. Depoliticisation, the reverse process, is when issues are no longer the subject of political contestation. It is characterised by governance through consensus-building and pragmatic compromise. It occurs when subjects are left to experts, such as technocratic or bureaucratic institutions, or left to individuals and free markets, through liberalisation or deregulation. It is often connected with multi-level governance. The concept has been used to explain the "democratic gap" between politicians and citizens who lack choice, agency and opportunities for deliberation. In the 21st century, depoliticisation has been linked to disillusionment with neoliberalism. Depoliticisation has negative consequences for regime legitimacy, and produces anti-political sentiment associated with populism, which can result in "repoliticisation" (politicisation following depoliticisation). Current studies of politicisation are separated into various subfields. It is primarily examined on three separate levels: within national political systems, within the European Union and within international institutions. Academic approaches vary greatly and are frequently disconnected. It has been studied from subdisciplines such as comparative politics, political sociology, European studies and legal theory. The politicisation of science occurs when actors stress the inherent uncertainty of scientific method to challenge scientific consensus, undermining the positive impact of science on political debate by causing citizens to dismiss scientific evidence. Definitions The dominant academic framework for understanding politicisation is the systems model, which sees politics as an arena or sphere. In this perspective, politicisation is the process by which issues or phenomena enter the sphere of "the political", a space of controversy and conflict. Alternatively, in the behaviouralist approach to political science, which sees politics as action or conflict, politicisation is conceptualised as the process by which an issue or phenomenon becomes significantly more visible in the collective consciousness, causing political mobilisation. In the systems model, depoliticisation is seen as "arena-shifting": removing issues from the political sphere by placing them outside the direct control or influence of political institutions, such as legislatures and elected politicians, thereby denying or minimising their political nature. In the behaviouralist model, depoliticisation indicates the reduction of popular interest in an issue, a weakening of participation in the public sphere and the utilisation of power to prevent opposition. Theory Comparative politics (national level) Majoritarian institutions, such as parliaments (legislatures) and political parties, are associated with politicisation because they represent popular sovereignty and their agents are subject to short-term political considerations, particularly the need to compete for votes ("vote-seeking") by utilising populist rhetoric and policies. Non-majoritarian institutions, such as constitutional courts, central banks and international organisations, are neither directly elected nor directly managed by elected officials, and are connected with depoliticisation as they tend towards moderation and compromise. Declines in voter turnout, political mobilisation and political party membership, trends present in most OECD countries from the 1960s onwards, reflect depoliticisation. A number of causes for this shift have been suggested. The growth of big tent political parties (parties which aim to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters) resulted in reduced polarisation and centralised decision-making, with increased compromise and bargaining. In postwar Europe, the development of neo-corporatism led to political bargaining between powerful employers' organizations, trade unions and the government in a system known as tripartism, within which cartel parties could successfully prevent competition from newer parties. Globally during the late 20th century, central banks and constitutional courts became increasingly important. Robert Dahl argued that these processes risked producing alienation because they created a professionalised form of politics that was "anti-ideological" and "too remote and bureaucratized". Other contemporary scholars saw depoliticisation as a positive indication of dealignment and democratic maturity, as political competition came to be dominated by issues rather than cleavages. In the early 21st century, theorists such as Colin Crouch and Chantal Mouffe argued that low participation was not the result of satisfaction with political systems, but the consequence of low confidence in institutions and political representatives; in 2007, Colin Hay explicitly linked these studies with the concept of politicisation. Since the 1990s, a process of "repoliticisation" has occurred on the national level, marked by the growth of right-wing populist parties in Europe, increased polarisation in American politics and higher voter turnout. The divide between the winners and losers of globalisation and neoliberalism is hypothesised to have played a major role in this process, having replaced class conflict as the primary source of politicisation. Sources of conflict along this line include an "integration–demarcation" cleavage (between the losers of globalisation, who favour protectionism and nationalism, and the winners of globalisation, who prefer increased competition, open borders and internationalism); and a similar "cosmopolitan–communitarian" cleavage (which places additional emphasis on a cultural divide between supporters of universal norms and those who believe in cultural particularism). Disillusionment with neoliberal policies has also been cited as a factor behind the processes of depoliticisation and repoliticisation, particularly through the lens of public choice theory. In 2001, Peter Burnham argued that in the UK the New Labour administration of Tony Blair used depoliticisation as a governing strategy, presenting contentious neoliberal reforms as non-negotiable "constraints" in order to lower political expectations, thus creating apathy and submission among the electorate and facilitating the emergence of "anti-politics". Neo-Marxist, radical democratic and anti-capitalist critiques aim to repoliticise what they describe as neoliberal society, arguing that Marx's theory of alienation can be used to explain depoliticisation. European studies (European Union) In post-functionalist theory, the politicisation of the EU is seen as a threat to integration because it constrains executive decision makers in member states due to domestic partisanship, fear of referendum defeat and the electoral repercussions of European policies, ultimately preventing political compromise on the European level. The EU has experienced politicisation over time however it has been at an increased rate since the early 2000's due to the series of crises. At a national level within its member states, a rise in populism has contributed to volatile party politics and the election of anti-EU representatives. Due to the EU's increasing involvement and influence in controversial policy issues as it strives for further integration, there is a rise in the contestational nature of interactions between EU agents. After dissatisfaction with governance, rising populist challengers have grown the cleavages in electoral divides. International relations (international level) Government agencies Politicisation of science Climate science COVID-19 pandemic During the COVID-19 pandemic, the politicisation of investigations into the origin of COVID-19 led to geopolitical tension between the United States and China, the growth of anti-Asian rhetoric and the bullying of scientists. Some scientists said that politicisation could obstruct global efforts to suppress the virus and prepare for future pandemics. Political scientists Giuliano Bobba and Nicolas Hubé have argued that the pandemic strengthened populist politicians by providing an opportunity for them to promote policies such as tighter border controls, anti-elitism and restriction of public freedoms. See also Political polarisation References Notes Citations Bibliography Political science Political terminology Comparative politics Politics

Comparative politics

Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relating to political institutions, political behavior, conflict, and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics may be referred to by other names, such as comparative government (the comparative study of forms of government). Definition Comparative politics is the systematic study and comparison of the diverse political systems in the world. It is comparative in searching to explain why different political systems have similarities or differences and how developmental changes came to be between them. It is systematic in that it looks for trends, patterns, and regularities among these political systems. The research field takes into account political systems throughout the globe, focusing on themes such as democratization, globalization, and integration. New theories and approaches have been used in political science in the last 40 years thanks to comparative politics. Some of these focus on political culture, dependency theory, developmentalism, corporatism, indigenous theories of change, comparative political economy, state-society relations, and new institutionalism. Some examples of comparative politics are studying the differences between presidential and parliamentary systems, democracies and dictatorships, parliamentary systems in different countries, multi-party systems such as Canada and two-party systems such as the United States. Comparative politics must be conducted at a specific point in time, usually the present. A researcher cannot compare systems from different periods of time; it must be static. While historically the discipline explored broad questions in political science through between-country comparisons, contemporary comparative political science primarily uses subnational comparisons. More recently, there has been a significant increase in the interest of subnational comparisons and the benefit it has on comparative politics. We would know far less about major credible issues within political science if it weren't for subnational research. Subnational research contributes important methodological, theoretical, and substantive ideas to the study of politics. Important developments often obscured by a national-level focus are easier to decipher through subnational research. An example could be regions inside countries where the presence of state institutions have been reduced in effect or value. The name comparative politics refers to the discipline's historical association with the comparative method, described in detail below. Arend Lijphart argues that comparative politics does not have a substantive focus in itself, but rather a methodological one: it focuses on "the how but does not specify the what of the analysis." Peter Mair and Richard Rose advance a slightly different definition, arguing that comparative politics is defined by a combination of a substantive focus on the study of countries' political systems and a method of identifying and explaining similarities and differences between these countries using common concepts. Sometimes, especially in the United States, the term "comparative politics" is used to refer to "the politics of foreign countries." This usage of the term is disputed. Comparative politics is significant because it helps people understand the nature and working of political frameworks around the world. There are many types of political systems worldwide according to the authentic, social, ethnic, racial, and social history. Indeed, even comparative constructions of political association shift starting with one country then onto the next. For instance, India and the United States are majority-rule nations; nonetheless, the U.S. has a liberal vote-based presidential system contrasted with the parliamentary system used in India. Even the political decision measure is more diverse in the United States when found in light of the Indian popular government. The United States has a president as their leader, while India has a prime minister. Relative legislative issues encourage us to comprehend these central contracts and how the two nations are altogether different regardless of being majority rule. This field of study is critical for the fields of international relations and conflict resolution. Near politics encourages international relations to clarify worldwide legislative issues and the present winning conditions worldwide. Although both are subfields of political science, comparative politics examines the causes of international strategy and the effect of worldwide approaches and frameworks on homegrown political conduct and working. History of the field Harry H. Eckstein traces the history of the field of comparative politics back to Aristotle, and sees a string of thinkers from Machiavelli and Montesquieu, to Gaetano Mosca and Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels, on to James Bryce - with his Modern Democracies (1921) - and Carl Joachim Friedrich - with his Constitutional Government and Democracy (1937) - contributing to its history. Two traditions reaching back to Aristotle and Plato Philippe C. Schmitter argues that the "family tree" of comparative politics has two main traditions: one, invented by Aristotle, that he calls "sociological constitutionalism"; a second, that he traced back to Plato, that he calls "legal constitutionalism"". Schmitter places various scholars under each tradition: 1. Sociological constitutionalism: Some classic scholars in this tradition are: "Polybius, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, Lorenz von Stein, Karl Marx, Moisei Ostrogorski, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Robert Michels, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Herbert Tingsten." Schmitter argues that, in the twentieth century, this tradition was known by the label of "historical political sociology" and included scholars such as "Stein Rokkan, T.H. Marshall, Reinhard Bendix, Otto Kirchheimer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Juan Linz, Hans Daalder, Mattei Dogan, S.N. Eisenstadt, Harry Eckstein, and Dankwart Rustow." 2. Legal constitutionalism: Some classic scholars in this tradition are: "Léon Duguit, Georges Burdeau, James Bryce, A. Lawrence Lowell, and Woodrow Wilson." Schmitter argues that in the twentieth century this tradition was continued by: "Maurice Duverger, Herman Finer, Samuel Finer, Giovanni Sartori, Carl J. Friedrich, Samuel Beer, Jean Blondel, F.A. Hermens, and Klaus von Beyme." Periodization as a field of political science Gerardo L. Munck offers the following periodization for the evolution of modern comparative politics, as a field of political science - understood as an academic discipline - in the United States: 1. The Constitution of Political Science as a Discipline, 1880–1920 2. The Behavioral Revolution, 1921–66 3. The Post-Behavioral Period, 1967–88 4. The Second Scientific Revolution 1989–2005 Contemporary patterns, 2000-present Since the turn of the century, several trends in the field can be detected. End of the pretense of rational choice theory to hegemonize the field Lack of a unifying metatheory Greater attention to causal inference, and increased use of experimental methods. Continued use of observation methods, including qualitative methods. New concern with a "hegemony of methods" as theorizing is not given as much attention. Substantive areas of research By some definitions, comparative politics can be traced back to Greek philosophy, as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's The Politics. As a modern sub-discipline, comparative politics is constituted by research across a range of substantive areas, including the study of: Politics of democratic states Politics of authoritarian states Public goods provision and distributive politics Political violence Political identity, including ethnic and religious politics Democratization and regime change Elections and electoral and party systems Political economy of development Collective action Voting behavior Origins of the state Comparative political institutions Methodologies for comparative political research Quantitative politics with democracy indices While many researchers, research regimes, and research institutions are identified according to the above categories or foci, it is not uncommon to claim geographic or country specialization as the differentiating category. The division between comparative politics and international relations is artificial, as processes within nations shape international processes, and international processes shape processes within states. Some scholars have called for an integration of the fields. Comparative politics does not have similar "isms" as international relations scholarship. Methodology While the name of the subfield suggests one methodological approach (the comparative method), political scientists in comparative politics use the same diversity of social scientific methods as scientists elsewhere in the field, including experiments, comparative historical analysis, case studies, survey methodology, and ethnography. Researchers choose a methodological approach in comparative politics driven by two concerns: ontological orientation and the type of question or phenomenon of interest. (Mill's) comparative method Most Similar Systems Design/Mill's Method of Difference: This method consists in comparing very similar cases which only differ in the dependent variable, on the assumption that this would make it easier to find those independent variables which explain the presence/absence of the dependent variable. Most Different Systems Design/Mill's Method of Similarity: This method consists in comparing very different cases, all of which however have in common the same dependent variable, so that any other circumstance which is present in all the cases can be regarded as the independent variable. Subnational comparative analysis Since the turn of the century, many students of comparative politics have compared units within a country. Relatedly, there has been a growing discussion of what Richard O. Snyder calls the "subnational comparative method." See also Comparative historical research Comparative Political Studies Comparative law Critical juncture theory Historical institutionalism Historical sociology International relations Modernization theory Political science Political sociology Institutional economics Comparison of electoral systems References Further reading Alford, Robert R., and Roger Friedland. 1985. Powers of Theory. Capitalism, the State, and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Almond, Gabriel A. 1968. "Politics, Comparative," pp. 331–36, in David L. Sills (ed.), International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences Vol. 12. New York: Macmillan. Baldez, Lisa. 2010. "The Gender Lacuna in Comparative Politics". Perspectives on Politics 8(1): 199–205. Boix, Carles, and Susan C. Stokes (eds.). 2007. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Campus, Donatella, and Gianfranco Pasquino (eds.). 2009. Masters of Political Science, Vol. 1. Colchester: ECPR Press. Campus, Donatella, Gianfranco Pasquino, and Martin Bull (eds.). 2011. Masters of Political Science, Vol. 2. Colchester: ECPR Press. Chilcote, Ronald H., 1994. Theories of Comparative Politics: The Search for a Paradigm Revisited, Second edition. Boulder: Westview Press. Daalder, Hans (ed.). 1997. Comparative European Politics: The Story of a Profession. London: Pinter. Dosek, Tomas. 2020. "Multilevel Research Designs: Case Selection, Levels of Analysis, and Scope Conditions". Studies in Comparative International Development 55:4" 460–80. Eckstein, Harry. 1963. "A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present," pp. 3–32, in David Apter and Harry Eckstein (eds.), Comparative Politics: A Reader. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Janos, Andrew C. 1986. Politics and Paradigms. Changing Theories of Change in Social Science. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press. Landman, Todd, and Neil Robinson (eds.). 2009. The Sage Handbook of Comparative Politics. London: Sage Publications. Lichbach, Mark Irving, and Alan S. Zuckerman (eds.). 2009. Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mair, Peter. 1996. "Comparative Politics: An Overview," pp. 309–35, in Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds.), A New Handbook of Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Munck, Gerardo L. 2007. "The Past and Present of Comparative Politics," pp. 32–59, in Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder, Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Munck, Gerardo L., and Richard Snyder (eds.). 2007. Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Pepinsky, Thomas B. 2019. "The Return of the Single-Country Study." Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 22: 187–203. Schmitter, Philippe C. 2009. "The Nature and Future of Comparative Politics." European Political Science Review 1,1: 33–61. von Beyme, Klaus. 2008. "The Evolution of Comparative Politics," pp. 27–43, in Daniel Caramani (ed.), Comparative Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, Matthew Charles. 2017. "Trends in Political Science Research and the Progress of Comparative Politics," PS: Political Science & Politics 50(4): 979–84. External links Comparative Methods in Political & Social Research: useful resources from Prof. David Levi-Faur's course at the University of Haifa. Comparative Politics in Argentina & Latin America: Site dedicated to the development of comparative politics in Latin America. Paper Works, Articles and links to specialized web sites. Comparative Politics Research Group : An initiative by the University of Innsbruck containing useful resources and references to scientific publications. Subfields of political science Political science Politics

Mediatization (media)

Mediatization (or medialization) is a method whereby the mass media influence other sectors of society, including politics, business, culture, entertainment, sport, religion, or education. Mediatization is a process of change or a trend, similar to globalization and modernization, where the mass media integrates into other sectors of the society. Political actors, opinion makers, business organizations, civil society organizations, and others have to adapt their communication methods to a form that suits the needs and preferences of the mass media. Any person or organization wanting to spread messages to a larger audience have to adapt their messages and communication style to make it attractive for the mass media. Introduction The concept of mediatization is still requires development, and there is no commonly agreed definition of the term. For example, a sociologist, Ernst Manheim, used mediatization as a way to describe social shifts that are controlled by the mass media, while a media researcher, Kent Asp, viewed mediatization as the relationship between politics, mass media, and the ever-growing divide between the media and government control. Some theorists reject precise definitions and operationalizations of mediatization, fearing that they would reduce the complexity of the concept and the phenomena it refers to, while others prefer a clear theory that can be tested, refined, or potentially refuted. The concept of mediatization is seen not as an isolated theory, but as a framework that holds the potential to integrate different theoretical strands, linking micro-level with meso- and macro-level processes and phenomena, and thus contributing to a broader understanding of the role of the media in the transformation of modern societies. Technological developments from newspapers to radio, television, Internet, and interactive social media helped shape mediatization. Other important influences include changes in organization and economic conditions of the media, such as the growing importance of independent market-driven media and a decreasing influence of state-sponsored, public service, and partisan media. Mass media influence public opinion and the structure and processes of political communication, political decision-making and the democratic process. This political influence is not a one-way influence. While the mass media may influence government and political actors, the politicians also influence the media through regulation, negotiation, or selective access to information. The increasing influence of economic market forces is typically seen in trends such as tabloidization and trivialization, while news reporting and political coverage diminish to slogans, sound bites, spin, horse race reporting, celebrity scandals, populism, and infotainment. History The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan is sometimes associated with the founding of the field. He proposed that a communication medium, not the messages it carries, should be the primary focus of study. The Hungarian-born sociologist Ernest Manheim was the first to use the German word Mediatisierung to describe the social influence of the mass media in a book published in 1933, though with little elaboration on the concept. Mediatisierung already existed in German but had a different meaning (see German mediatisation). In his Theory of Communicative Action, the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas used the word in 1981. Whether Habermas used the word in the old meaning or in the new meaning of media influence is debated. The first appearance of the word mediatization in the English language may be in the English translation of Theory of Communication Action. The Swedish professor of journalism, Kent Asp, was the first into develop the concept of mediatization to a coherent theory in his seminal dissertation, where he investigated the mediatization of politics. His dissertation was published as a book in Swedish in 1986. Kent Asp described the mediatization of political life, by which he meant a process whereby “a political system to a high degree is influenced by and adjusted to the demands of the mass media in their coverage of politics." In the tradition of Kent Asp, the Danish media science professor Stig Hjarvard further developed the concept of mediatization and applied it not only to politics but also to other sectors of society, including religion. Hjarvard defined mediatization as a social process whereby the society is saturated and inundated by the media to the extent that the media can no longer be thought of as separated from other institutions within the society. Mediatization has since gained widespread usage in English despite sounding awkward. Mediatization theory is part of a paradigmatic shift in media and communication research. Following the concept of mediation, mediatization has become a significant concept for capturing how processes of communication transform society in large-scale relationships. While the early theory building around mediatization had a strong center in Europe, many American media sociologists and media economists made observations about the effects of commercial mass media competition on news quality, public opinion, and political processes. For example, David Altheide discussed how media logic distorts political news, and John McManus demonstrated how economic competition violates media ethics and makes it difficult for citizens to evaluate the quality of the news. The European theorists readily embraced Altheide's concept of media logic, and now the two lines of research are integrated into one standard paradigm. Modern theorists now believe there is a new form of mediatization developing. This next phase of mediatization has been dubbed "deep mediatization". Industry change caused through mediatization only increase under deep mediatization and may quickly grow out of control. Schools of Mediatization Theorists have distinguished three theoretical schools of mediatization, listed below. Institutionalist The leading scholars of this school of mediatization, David Altheide and Robert Snow, coined the term media logic in 1979. Media logic refers to the form of communication and the process through which media transmit and communicate information. The logic of media forms the fund of knowledge that is generated and circulated in society. Building on Marshall McLuhan, Altheide discusses the role of communication formats for the recognition, definition, selection, organization, and presentation of experience. A central thesis is that knowledge affects social activities more than wealth or force. A consequence of this is communication technology influencing power. For example, Gutenberg's printing press enabled the wide distribution of his Bible, which was a threat to the dominance of the Catholic Church. Altheide has emphasized that social order is communicated. It has severe consequences if this communication is exaggerated and dramatized to fit the media logic. The media may create moral panics by exaggerating and misrepresenting social problems. One example documented by Altheide is a media panic over missing children in the 1980s. The media gave the impression that many children were abducted by criminals, when in fact, most of the children listed as missing were runaways or involved in custody disputes. The penchant of the media for emotional drama and horror may lead to gonzo journalism and perversion of justice. Altheide describes "gonzo justice" as a process where the media become active players in the persecution of perceived wrongdoers, where public humiliation replaces court trials without concern for due process and civil liberties. Gonzo journalism can have severe consequences for democracy and international relations when, for example, international conflicts are presented by dramatizing the evil of foreign heads of state, such as Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein. Socio-constructivist The social constructivist school of mediatization theory involves discussions at a high level of abstraction to embrace the complexity of the interaction between mass media and other fields of society. The theorists are not denying the relevance of empirical research of causal connections but warning against a linear understanding of process and change. The theorists want to avoid the extreme positions of either technological determinism or social determinism. Their approach is not media-centric in the sense of a one-sided approach to causality, but media-centered in the sense of a holistic understanding of the various intersecting social forces at work, allowing a particular perspective and emphasis on the role of the media in these processes. The concept of media logic is criticized with the argument that there is not one media logic but many media logics, depending on the context. Andreas Hepp, a leading theorist of the constructivist school of mediatization theory, describes the role of the mass media not as a driving force but as a molding force. This force is not a direct effect of the material structure of the media. The molding force of the media only becomes concrete in different ways of mediation that are highly contextual. Hepp does not see mediatization as a theory of media effects, but as a sensitizing concept that draws our attention to fundamental transformations we experience in today's media environment. This concept provides a panorama of investigating the meta-process of interrelation between media communicative change and sociocultural change. These transformations are seen in three ways in particular: the historical depth of the process of media-related transformations, the diversity of media-related transformations in different domains of society, and the connection of media-related transformations to further processes of modernization. Hepp is deliberately avoids precise definitions of mediatization by using metaphors such as molding force and panorama. He argues that precise definitions may limit the complexity of the interrelations where it is important to consider both the material and the symbolic domain. However, materialists argue that such a loosely defined concept may too easily become a matter of belief rather than a proper theory than can be tested. The process of media change is coupled with technological change. The emergence of digital media has brought a new stage of mediatization, which can be called deep mediatization. Deep mediatization is an advanced stage of the process in which all elements of our social world are intricately related to digital media and their underlying infrastructures, and where large IT corporations play a greater role. Materialist The materialist school of mediatization theory studies how society, to an increasing degree, becomes dependent on the media and their logic. The studies combine results from different areas of science to describe how changes in the media and society are interrelated. In particular, they are focusing on how the political processes in Western democracies are changing through mediatization. The mediatization of politics can be characterized by four different dimensions, according to the Swedish professor of political communication Jesper Strömbäck and the Swiss professor of media research Frank Esser: The first dimension refers to the degree to which the media constitute the most important source of information about politics and society. The second dimension refers to the degree to which the media have become independent from other political and social institutions. The third dimension refers to the degree to which media content and the coverage of politics and current affairs are guided by media logic rather than political logic. This dimension deals with the extent to which the media's needs and standards of newsworthiness, rather than those of political actors or institutions, are decisive for what the media cover and how they cover it. The fourth dimension refers to how media logic or political logic guides political institutions, organizations, and actors. This four-dimensional framework makes it possible to break down the highly complex process of the mediatization of politics into discrete dimensions that can be studied empirically. The relationship between these four dimensions can be described as follows: If the mass media provide the most important source of information and the media are relatively independent, then media will be able to shape their contents to fit their demand for optimizing the number of readers and viewers, i.e., the media logic, while politicians have to adjust their communication to fit this media logic. The media are never completely independent, of course. They are subject to political regulation and dependent on economic factors and news sources. Scholars are debating where the balance of powers between media and politicians lies. The central concept of media logic contains three components: professionalism, commercialism, and technology. Media professionalism refers to the professional norms and values that guide journalists, such as independence and newsworthiness. Commercialism refers to the result of economic competition between commercial news media. The commercial criteria can be summarized as the least expensive mix of content that protects the interests of sponsors and investors while garnering the largest audience advertisers will pay to reach. Media technology refers to the specific requirements and possibilities that are characteristic of each of the different media technologies, including newspapers with their emphasis on print, radio with its emphasis on audio, television with its emphasis on visuals, and digital media with their emphasis on interactivity and instantaneousness. Mediatization plays a key role in social change that can be defined by four tendencies: extension, substitution, amalgamation, and accommodation. Extension refers to how communication technology extends the limits of human communication in terms of space, time, and expressiveness. Substitution refers to how media consumption replaces other activities by providing an attractive alternative or simply by consuming time that might otherwise have been spent on, for example, social activities. Amalgamation refers to how media use is woven into the fabric of everyday life so that the boundaries between mediated and nonmedia activities and between mediated and social definitions of reality are becoming blurred. Accommodation refers to how actors and organizations of all sectors of society, including business, politics, entertainment, sport, etc., adapt their activities and modes of operation to fit the media system. There is a vigorous discussion about the role of mediatization in society. Some argue that we live in a mediatization society where mass media deeply penetrate all spheres of society and are complicit in the rising political populism, while others warn against inflating mediatization to a meta-process or a superordinate process of social change. The media should not be seen as powerful agents of change because it is rare to observe the consequences of intentional actions by the media. The social consequences of mediatization are more often to be seen as unintended consequences of the media structure. Influence of media technology Newspapers Newspapers have been available since the 18th century and became more widespread in the early 20th century due to improvements in printing technology (see history of journalism). Four typical types of newspapers can be distinguished: popular, quality, regional, and financial newspapers. The popular or tabloid newspapers typically contain a high proportion of soft news, personal focus, and negative news. They often use sensationalism and attention-catching headlines to increase single-copy sales from newsstands and supermarkets, while quality newspapers are generally considered to have a higher quality of journalism. Relying more on subscriptions than on single copy sales, they have less need for sensationalism. Regional newspapers have more local news, while financial newspapers have more international news of interest to their readers. Early newspapers were often partisan, associated with a particular political party, while today they are mostly controlled by free market forces. Telegraph The introduction of the electric telegraph in the US in the mid-19th century significantly influenced the contents of newspapers, giving them easy access to national news. This increased voter turnout for presidential elections. Radio When radio became commonly available, it became an efficient medium for news, education of the public, and propaganda. Exposure to radio programs with educational content significantly increased children's school performance. Campaigns about the health effects of tobacco smoking and other health issues have been effective. The effects of radio programs may be unintended. For example, soap opera programs in Africa that portrayed attractive lifestyles affected people's norms and behaviors and their political preferences for redistribution of wealth. The radio can also facilitate political activism. Radio stations targeting a black audience had a strong effect on political activism and participation in the civil rights movement in the southern US states in the 1960s. The radio could also be a strong medium for propaganda in the years before television became available. The Roman Catholic priest Charles Coughlin in Michigan embraced radio broadcasting when radio was a new and rapidly expanding technology during the 1920s. Coughlin initially used the new possibility for reaching a mass audience for religious sermons, but after the onset of the Great Depression, he switched to mainly voicing his controversial political opinions, which were often antisemitic and fascistic. The radio was also a powerful tool for propaganda in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and during the war. The Nazi government facilitated the distribution of cheap radio receivers (Volksempfänger), which enabled Adolf Hitler to reach a large audience through his frequent propaganda speeches, while it was illegal for the Germans to listen to foreign radio stations. In Italy, Benito Mussolini used the radio for similar propaganda speeches. Television The social impact of radio was reduced after the war when television outcompeted the radio. Kent Asp, who studied the interaction of television with politics in Sweden, has identified a history of increasing mediatization. The politicians recognized in the 1960s that television had become a predominant channel for political communication took place through the following decades. The gradual acclimatization, adjustment, and adoption of media logic in political communication took place through the following decades. By the 2000s, the political institutions had almost completely integrated the logic of television and other mass media into their procedures. Television outcompeted newspapers and radio and crowded out other activities such as play, sports, study, and social activities. This outcome has led to lower school performance for children who have access to entertainment TV programs. TV viewers tend to imitate the lifestyle of role models that they see on entertainment shows. This imitation has resulted in lower fertility and higher divorce rates in various countries. Television is delivering strong messages of patriotism and national unity in China where the media are state-controlled. Toys/Play The mediatization of toys in the United States can be traced back to the post-World War II era of the 1950s. Advertisers saw the rise of children's television programming as an opportunity to utilize a new medium to market toys. Toys became heavily promoted in the media through television. Commercialization of children's television programs increased in the 1980s after the deregulation of American television. Over time, this led to the creation of popular toy brands and characters, such as G.I. Joe and Barbie, who were given their own television shows and movies to sell more toys. With the rise of the Internet, tablets, smartphones, and other Internet-connected devices, the toy and media industries have become even more closely linked, giving companies even greater opportunities to market their toys to children with the help of mediatization. Internet The advent of the Internet has created new opportunities and conditions for traditional newspapers and online-only news providers. Many newspapers are now publishing their news on paper and also online. This shift has enabled a more diverse assembly of breaking news, longer reports, and traditional magazine journalism. The increased competition in a diversified media market has led to more human interest and lifestyle stories and less political news, especially in the online versions of the newspapers. Social media Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, have enabled a more interactive form of mass communication. The new form of Internet media that allow user-generated content has been called Web 2.0. The possibilities for user involvement have increased opportunities for networking, collaboration, and civic engagement. Protest movements, in particular, have benefited from an independent communication infrastructure. The circulation of messages on social media relies, to a great extent, on users who like, share, and re-distribute messages. This kind of circulation of messages is controlled less by the logic of market economics and more by the principles of memetics. Messages are selected and recirculated based on a new set of criteria different from the selection criteria of newspapers, radio, and television. People tend to share the psychologically appealing and attention-catching messages. Social media users are remarkably bad at evaluating the truth of the messages they share. Studies show that false messages are shared more often than true messages because false messages are more surprising and attention-catching. This spreading of false information has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories on social media. Attempts to counter misinformation by fact-checking have had limited effect. People prefer to follow the Internet forums, pages, and groups they agree with. At the same time, the media prefer topics that are already popular. This has led to the large-scale occurrence of echo chambers and filter bubbles. A consequence of this is that the political arena has become more polarized because different groups of citizens are attending to different news sources, though the evidence of this effect is mixed. Other forms of communication channels Online political participation may affect the political standpoints of frequent media consumers due to mass mediatization, which is becoming increasingly prevalent. Blogs, videos, and websites are all examples of alternative communication channels, as opposed to traditional media, such as newspapers and television. Through blog, video and website communication, individuals can gain a further connection to political institutions through freely expressing their views and opinions. This communication is possible because the Internet is bringing elites and members of the public closer together. Any ordinary person can send e-mails to a politician or a political journalist, expecting a response, or even generate millions of impressions upon regular viewers on YouTube or the Internet by publishing their opinions. Through these alternative means of communication, many people find that online participation with politics and even high-status politicians is becoming increasingly common and accessible. Expressive communication through the Internet proves to be more effective than communication through traditional sources, as prosumers (a combination of a producer and consumer making their media as a consumer) are becoming powerful through their reach. This alternative means of communication makes it more likely for false information to spread online, however, through sources that are unreliable and that anybody can post on, such as TikTok, and political participation can be damaged by this or corrupted through ideas or concepts that are not true. Online participation has led to in-person political activities and the contribution of political activists. An example is Howard Dean's Blog for America, which served as a forum for people from various backgrounds to get involved and coordinate events in the 2004 election. Online communication breeds offline communication through activism organized online, which takes place in the real world. Physical resources Media materialism is a theory that addresses the media's impact on the physical environment. Media materialism covers three aspects: The consumption of natural resources for industrial production of modern communication technology The energy consumption of communication technology in residential and institutional sectors The waste that is created by discarded cell phones, televisions, computers, etc. Influence of market forces The economic mechanisms that influence the mass media are quite complex because commercial mass media are competing on many different markets at the same time: Competition for consumers, i.e. readers, listeners, and viewers Competition for advertisers and sponsors Competition for investors Competition for access to information sources, such as politicians, experts, etc. Competition for content providers and access rights, e.g. transmission rights for sports events The economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian wrote that information commodity markets don't work. There are several reasons for this. An important characteristic that makes information markets different from most other markets is that the fixed costs are high while the variable costs are low or zero. The fixed costs are the costs of producing content. This includes journalistic work, research, production of educational content, entertainment, etc. The variable costs are the marginal costs of adding one more consumer. The costs of broadcasting a TV show are the same whether there is one viewer or a million viewers, hence the variable costs are zero. In general, the variable costs for digital media is virtually zero because information can be copied at very low costs. The variable costs for newspapers are the costs of printing and selling one more copy, which are low but not zero. Commercial mass media are competing for a limited supply of advertising money. The more media companies that compete for advertising money, the lower the price of advertising, and the less money each company has for covering the fixed costs of producing content. Free competition in a media market with many competitors can lead to ruinous competition where the revenue for each company is hardly enough to produce content of the lowest possible quality. The news media are not only competing for advertisers with other news media, they are also competing for advertisers with other companies that mainly facilitate communication rather than produce information, such as search engines and social media. IT companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. are dominating the advertising market, leaving less than half of the revenue for news media. The strong dependence on advertising money is forcing commercial mass media to mainly target audiences that are profitable to the advertisers. They tend to avoid controversial content and avoid issues that the advertisers dislike. The competition for access to politicians, police, and other important news sources can enable these sources to manipulate the media by providing selective information and by favoring those media that give them positive coverage. Competition between TV stations for transmission rights to the most popular sports events, the most popular entertainment formats, and the most popular talk show hosts can drive up prices to extreme levels. This is often a winner-takes-it-all market where perhaps a pay TV channel is able to outbid the public broadcast channels. The result is that for example a popular sports event will be available to fewer viewers at higher prices than would result if competition was limited. Thus, competition on media markets is very different from competition on other markets with higher variable costs. Many studies have shown that fierce competition between news media results in trivialization and poor quality. We are seeing a large amount of cheap entertainment, gossip, and sensationalism, and very little civic affairs and thorough journalistic research. Newspapers are particularly affected by the increasing competition, resulting in lower circulation and lower journalistic quality. Classical economic theory would predict that competition leads to diversity, but this is not always the case with media markets. Moderate competition may lead to niche diversification, but there are many examples where fierce competition instead leads to wasteful sameness. Many TV channels are producing the same kind of cheap entertainment that appeals to the largest possible audience. The high fixed costs favor large companies and large markets. Unregulated media markets often lead to concentration of ownership, which can be horizontal (same company owning multiple channels) or vertical (content suppliers and network distributors under same owner). Economic efficiency is improved by the concentration of ownership, but it may reduce diversity by excluding unaffiliated content suppliers. Unregulated markets tend to be dominated by a few large companies, while smaller firms may occupy niche positions. Large markets are characterized by monopolistic competition where each company offers a slightly different product. The cable TV companies are differentiated along political lines in the USA where the fairness doctrine no longer applies. We may expect that a company that runs multiple broadcast channels would produce different content on the different channels to avoid competing with itself, but the evidence shows a mixed picture. Some studies show that market concentration increases diversity and innovation, while other studies show the opposite. A market where multiple companies own one TV channel each does not guarantee diversity either. On the contrary, we often see wasteful duplication where everybody is trying to reach the same mainstream audience with the same kind of programs. The situation is different for publicly funded TV channels. The non-commercial Danish national TV, for example, has multiple broadcast channels sending different kinds of content in order to meet its public service obligation. European countries have a tradition for public service radio and television that is funded fully or partially by government subsidies or mandatory license payment for everybody who has a radio or TV. Historically, these public service broadcasters have delivered high quality programmes including news based on thorough journalistic investigation, as well as educational programmes, public information, debate, special programs for minorities, and entertainment. However, broadcasters who depend on government funding or mandatory license payments are vulnerable to political pressure from the incumbent government. Some media are protected from political pressure through strong charters and arms-length oversight organizations, while those with weaker protection are more influenced by pressure from politicians. The public service broadcasters in several European countries initially had monopoly on broadcasting, but the strict regulation was relaxed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Competition from commercial radio and TV stations had a strong impact on the public service broadcasters. In Greece, the new competition from commercial TV led to lower quality and less diversity, contrary to the expectation of the economists. The contents of the public channels became similar to the commercial channels with less news and more entertainment. In the Netherlands, diversity of TV programs increased in periods with moderate competition, but decreased in periods with ruinous competition. In Denmark, the degree of dependence on advertising and private investors influenced the amount of trivialization, but even a publicly financed advertisement-free TV channel became more trivialized as a result of competition with commercial channels. In Finland, the government has avoided ruinous competition by strict regulation of the TV market. The result is more diversity. Sociocultural change The concept of mediatization is focusing not only on media effects but on the interrelation between the change of media communication on the one hand and sociocultural changes on the other. Some aspects of sociocultural change are reviewed in the following sections. Crime, disaster, and fear It is a common adage that fear sells. News media are often using fearmongering to attract readers, listeners, and viewers. Stories about crime, disaster, dangerous diseases, etc. have a prominent place in many news media. Historically, the tabloid newspapers have relied quite a lot on crime news in order to make customers buy today's newspaper. This strategy has been copied by the electronic media, especially when competition is fierce. The news media have often created moral panics by exaggerating minor social problems or even completely imaginary dangers as seen, for example, in the satanic cult scare. The scare stories may have political consequences, even if the media have only economic motives. Politicians often implement draconian laws and tough on crime policies because they feel compelled to react to the perceived dangers. In a larger perspective, the high affinity of many news media for crime and disaster has led to a culture of fear where people are taking unnecessary precautions against minor or unlikely dangers while they pay less attention to the much higher risks of, for example, lifestyle diseases or traffic accidents. Psychologists fear that the heavy exposure to crime and disaster in the media is fostering a mean world syndrome causing depression, anxiety, and anger. The perception of the world as a dangerous place may lead to authoritarian submission, conformism, and aggression against minorities according to the theory of right-wing authoritarianism. The culture of fear may have a strong influence on the whole culture and political climate. A widespread perception of collective danger can push the culture and politics in the direction of authoritarianism, intolerance, and bellicosity, according to regality theory. This is an unintended consequence of the economic competition between the news media. Law enforcement agencies have learned to cooperate with the mass media to dramatize crime in order to promote their own agenda. It is often suspected that politicians actively take advantage of the media's proclivity for fearmongering in order to promote a particular agenda. Warnings about possible terror attacks have increased public support for the US president, and the fearful sentiments after the September 11 terror attacks have been used to garner support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mediatization of Ignorance Unlike other forms of mediatization that focus on spreading knowledge, the mediatization of ignorance involves the mediatization of unknowns (known unknowns). The mediatization of ignorance occurs when information that has not yet been vetted, fully understood, or confirmed by experts moves through various media channels and is presented to audiences as fact. Three phases are found in the mediatization of ignorance: the revelation, the acceleration, and the irredeemable phases. During the revelation phase, information that experts still need to fully vetted is revealed to the media; however, communicative leaders such as scientists, health professionals, or researchers still have control of the narrative. During the acceleration phase, the information spreads rapidly and becomes, regardless of validity, what the audience begins to view as reality. Communicative leaders lose control of the narrative during this phase of the mediatization of ignorance. Finally, during the irredeemable phase, experts lose all control of the narrative even after gathering scientific evidence to prove that the non-vetted information was false. An example of the three phases of the mediatization of ignorance can be found during the early months of the COVID-19 Pandemic surrounding the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) drug. During the revelation phase, the media heard that the HCQ could be a potential treatment for COVID-19 based on limited initial evidence. This revelation sparked media and audience interest. The topic of the HCQ drug was later boosted into the acceleration phase after Donald Trump endorsed the drug, even though evidence of the drug's effectiveness was still lacking. Due to the reports of success and a celebrity endorsement, there was a temporary shortage of the HCQ drug due to high demand based on the perceived effectiveness of the drug. Even though later research and trials revealed little to no effectiveness of the HCQ drug against the COVID-19 virus, the irredeemable phase of the mediatization of ignorance had already been reached. Because of this, the link between the ineffective drug and COVID-19 had already been established and believed as true by a majority of audiences. Democracy and news media A democracy can only function properly if voters are well informed about candidates and political issues. It is generally assumed that the news media are serving the function of informing voters. However, since the late 20th century there has been a growing concern that voters may be poorly informed because the news media are focusing more on entertainment and gossip and less on serious journalistic research on political issues. The media professors Michael Gurevitch and Jay Blumler have proposed a number of functions that the mass media are expected to fulfill in a democracy: Surveillance of the sociopolitical environment Meaningful agenda setting Platforms for an intelligible and illuminating advocacy Dialogue across a diverse range of views Mechanisms for holding officials to account for how they have exercised power Incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved A principled resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence, integrity, and ability to serve the audience A sense of respect for the audience member, as potentially concerned and able to make sense of his or her political environment This proposal has inspired a lot of discussions over whether the news media are actually fulfilling the functions that a well functioning democracy requires. Commercial mass media are generally not accountable to anybody but their owners, and they have no obligation to serve a democratic function. They are controlled mainly by economic market forces. Fierce economic competition may force the mass media to divert themselves from any democratic ideals and focus entirely on how to survive the competition. Quality or elite newspapers are still providing serious political news, while tabloid newspapers and commercial TV stations deliver more soft news and entertainment. The quality of the news media is different in different countries, depending on regulation and market structure. However, even the quality newspapers are dumbing down their contents in order to target more readers when competition is fierce. Public service media have an obligation to provide reliable information to voters. Many countries have publicly funded radio and television stations with public service obligations, especially in Europe and Japan, while such media are weak or non-existent in other countries including the USA. Several studies have shown that the stronger the dominance of commercial broadcast media over public service media, the less the amount of policy-relevant information in the media and the more focus on horse race journalism, personalities, and the peccadillos of politicians. Public service broadcasters are characterized by more policy-relevant information and more respect for journalistic norms of impartiality than the commercial media. However, the trend of deregulation has put the public service model under increased pressure from competition with commercial media. Many journalists would prefer to hold their professional standards high, but the competition for audience is forcing them to deliver more soft news and entertainment and less substantial public affairs coverage. Politics has become popularized to such a degree that the lines between politics and entertainment are becoming increasingly blurred. At the same time, the commercialization has made the news media vulnerable to external influence and manipulation. The tabloidization and popularization of the news media is seen in an increasing focus on human examples rather than statistics and principles. The ability to find effective political solutions to social problems is hampered when problems tend to be blamed on individuals rather than on structural causes. This person-centered focus may have far-reaching consequences not only for domestic problems but also for foreign policy when international conflicts are blamed on foreign heads of state rather than on political and economic structures. A strong focus on fear and terrorism has allowed military logic to penetrate public institutions, leading to increased surveillance and the erosion of civil rights. There is more focus on politicians as personalities and less focus on political issues in the popular media. Election campaigns are covered more as horse races and less as debates about ideologies and issues. The dominating focus on spin, conflict, and competitive strategies has made voters perceive the politicians as egoists rather than idealists. This fosters mistrust and a cynical attitude to politics, less civic engagement, and less interest in voting. Bargaining between political parties becomes more difficult under media focus because necessary concessions will make individual negotiators lose credibility. Negotiations require an atmosphere of privacy which allows for compromises, communicated to the public as collective decisions without indicating any winner or loser. A considerable decline in the quantity and quality of negotiation outcomes seems likely due to this incompatibility between news media logic and political bargaining logic. The responsiveness and accountability of the democratic system is compromised when lack of access to substantive, diverse, and undistorted information is handicapping the citizens' capability of evaluating the political process. Formal ties between newspapers and political parties were common in the first half of the 20th century, but rare today. Instead, politicians must adapt to the media logic. Many politicians have found ways to manipulate the media to serve their own ends. They often stage events or leak information with the sole purpose of getting the media to cover their agenda. The fast pace and trivialization in the competitive news media is handicapping the political debate. Thorough and balanced investigation of complex political issues does not fit into this format. The political communication is characterized by short time horizons, short slogans, simple explanations, and simple answers. This is conducive to political populism rather than serious deliberation. The Italian businessman and populist politician Silvio Berlusconi took advantage of the fact that he owned many of the commercial TV stations. This secured him a favorable coverage that enabled him to become prime minister for a total of nine years. Studies in Italy show that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and less civic minded as adults. Exposure to educational content, on the other hand, improved the cognitive abilities and civic engagement. People form habits around their media consumption and often stick to the same media. This is an easy way to minimize the cognitive efforts of information processing. An experiment in China showed that consumers who were given access to uncensored news tended to stick to their old habits and watch the state censored news media. However, after given incentives to watch the uncensored news, they kept preferring the uncensored news, which led to persistent changes in their knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Some commentators have presented an optimistic view, arguing that democracy is still functioning despite the shortcomings of the media, while others deplore the rise of political populism, polarization, and extremism that the popular media seem to be contributing to. Many media scholars have discussed non-commercial news media with public service obligations as a means to improve the democratic process by providing the kind of political contents that a free market does not provide. The World Bank has recommended public service broadcasting services in order to strengthen democracy in developing countries. These broadcasting services should be accountable to an independent regulatory body that is adequately protected from interference from political and economic interests. Democracy and social media The emergence of the internet and the social media has profoundly altered the conditions for political communication. The social media have given ordinary citizens easy access to voice their opinion and share information while bypassing the filters of the large news media. This is often seen as an advantage for democracy. The social media make it possible for politicians to get immediate feedback from citizens on their policy proposals, but they also make it difficult for politicians and business leaders to hide information. The new possibilities for communication have fundamentally changed the way social movements and protest movements operate and organize. The internet and social media have provided powerful new tools for democracy movements in developing countries and emerging democracies, enabling them to organize protests and to produce visual events suitable for the media. The social media and search engines are financed mainly by advertising. They are able to target advertisements specifically to the population segments that the advertisers select. The fact that these media act like marketing companies and consultants may compromise their neutrality. Another problem is that the social media have no truth filters. The established news media have to guard their reputation as trustworthy, while ordinary citizens may post unreliable information. Echo chambers may emerge when people are sharing unchecked information with groups of like minded people. Studies find evidence of clusters of people with the same opinions on social media like Facebook. People tend to trust information shared by their friends. This may lead to selective exposure to partisan opinions, but several studies show that people are exposed to a more diverse set of news and opinions on social media than on traditional news media. False stories are shared more than true stories, as discussed above. Conspiracy theories, whether true or false, are shared on social media because people find them interesting, exciting, and entertaining. The proliferation of conspiracy beliefs may undermine public trust in the political system and public officials. A noteworthy example is the mistrust of health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some studies indicate that there are political asymmetries in responses to misinformation due to differences in personality characteristics and media structures. Psychological traits such as close-mindedness, uncertainty avoidance, and resistance to change are more common among conservatives than among liberals and moderates. These traits, combined with more selective media use and a more insular nature of the conservative media ecosystem, make conservatives more likely than liberals to share and believe misinformation. Liberal citizens are more likely to share fact-checking information than conservatives. Furthermore, liberal and moderate media are more likely than conservative media to fact check their stories and to retract false stories. State regulation of social media is a problem for free speech. Instead, major social media have implemented self-regulation in order to defend their reputation. Social media are often sanctioning against hate speech, while general misinformation is more difficult to combat. The medias' own filters are often unreliable and vulnerable to manipulation. Some social media are publishing fact-checking information in order to counter misinformation. Studies of the effects of fact-checking have given mixed results. Some studies find that fact-checking is reducing the beliefs in misinformation. Other studies find that corrective information influences knowledge but not voting intentions. Fact-checking may even be counterproductive when people do not trust the fact-checking organizations or when they construct counter-arguments. Some observers have proposed media literacy education as a means to make people less susceptible to believe misinformation. Research suggests that media literacy education is most effective when it includes personal feedback. The social media are very vulnerable to manipulation because it is possible to set up fake accounts. Various propaganda agencies are secretly setting up large numbers of fake social media accounts pretending to be ordinary people. The fake accounts are often operated by automated computers programmed to act like real people, the so-called bots. Such fake accounts and bots are used for spreading and sharing propaganda, disinformation, and fake news. Business operators may spread disinformation about competitors or stock markets; political organizations may try to influence the public opinion in political matters; and military intelligence organizations may use the spreading of disinformation as a means of information warfare. For example, the Russian web brigades or troll farms have disseminated large amounts of fake news in order to influence the election of US president Donald Trump in 2016, according to an intelligence report. See also Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Bots have also been highly involved in spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Mediatization of Politics The mediatization of politics focuses on the transformative effect media exerts on politics. It is argued that there are four dimensions of the transformation of politics. The first dimension focuses on media as the source of political information. If politics is highly mediatized, a public's only way of learning about new laws and policy is through the media. The second dimension is concerned with the media's independency from politics and whether or not the media is able to speak out against political figures. The third dimension focuses on which logic rules the media–– media logic or political logic. If politics are low to moderately mediatized, political logic (media coverage of laws and policy) will be favored whereas if politics are highly mediatized, media logic (coverage of entertaining and dramatized political stories) will be favored. Finally, the fourth dimension focuses on whether or not political figures favor media or political logic. Political populism Populism refers to a political style characterized by anti-establishment and anti-elite rhetoric and a simplified, polarized definition of political issues. The establishment is often evoked in populist rhetoric as the source of crisis, breakdown, or corruption. This can take the form of the denial of expert knowledge and the championing of common sense against the bureaucrats. Much of the appeal of populists comes from their disregard for “appropriate” ways of acting in the political realm. This includes a tabloid style with the use of slang, political incorrectness, and being overly demonstrative and colorful, as opposed to the elite behaviors of rigidness, rationality, and technocratic language. Citizens with populist attitudes have a preference for tabloid media content that simplifies issues in binary “us” versus “them” oppositions. It is often difficult for populist politicians to get their messages through the mainstream media, especially when these messages contain unverified claims or socially inappropriate speech. The internet has provided populists with new communication channels that match their needs for unfiltered communication. Populists sometimes rely on borderline truths, forged content, manipulative speech, and unverified claims that would not pass the gatekeepers at reputable news media. The availability of independent internet media and social media has thus opened a door to the spreading of biased information, selective perception, confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and inclinations to reinforce in-group identities in echo chambers. This has paved the way to a rise in populism around the world. Another factor contributing to the rise of populism is the concentration of ownership of internet news media. This enables the dissemination of attention-catching content targeted at specific audience segments in a fragmented market. The content that is most profitable happens to also be the most emotional, incendiary, polarizing, and divisive messages. This contributes to inflating the loudest and most antagonistic voices and intensifying social conflicts by distorting facts and limiting exposure to competing ideas. Right-wing populism is characterized by short and emotional or scandalizing messages without sophisticated theorizing. The communication is controlled by strong charismatic leaders in an asymmetric top-down manner. The social media pages of populist politicians are often heavily moderated to suppress critical comments. The type of reasoning is based mostly on anecdotal evidence and emotional narratives, while abstract arguments based on statistics or theory are dismissed as elitist. Left-wing populism is less top-down controlled and more engaging than right-wing populism. For example, the Spanish party Podemos is relying on a media strategy of viral dissemination of emotional, controversial, and provocative messages. Populism has led to strong polarization in many countries. The lack of shared world view and agreed-upon facts is an obstacle to meaningful democratic dialogue. Extreme political polarization may undermine the trust in democratic institutions, leading to erosion of civil rights and free speech and in some cases even reversion to autocracy. Sport Sport is a prime example of mediatization. The organization of sports is highly influenced by the mass media, and the media in turn are influenced by sports. Sport has historically had a very close relationship with mass media through a parallel development of sports organizations and sports journalism. Big sports events, such as the Tour de France and the UEFA Champions League, were originally invented and initiated by newspapers. The mass media are important for sports organizations. The media help attract new participants, encourage spectators, and attract sponsors, advertisers, and investors. Broadcasting of sports events is important for sports organizations as well as for television stations. This has led to increasing commercialization of sports since the 1980s. We have seen the development of close partnerships between a relatively small number of highly professional sports organizations and big broadcast organizations. The rules of the games, as well as tournament structures etc., have been adjusted to fit the entertainment focus of television and other news media. The commercialization of elite sport has led to an increased focus on individual athletes and individual teams through press photos, interviews, merchandise, and fan culture leading to the rise of stardom and extremely high salaries. The most popular sports can attract huge amounts of money through sponsorship and transmission rights, while a majority of less popular sports are marginalized and find it hard to attract funding. The most popular athletes, in particular, are traded or transferred at extreme prices. Popular sports events are used not only for advertising products and companies, but also for promoting countries through the organization of large international sporting events, such as the olympic games, world championships, etc. The commercialization and professionalization of sports has led to an increasing integration of sport enterprises and entertainment media, and a growing industry involving professional coaches, consultants, biomechanical experts, etc. These developments have led to new ethical concerns about the erosion of the spirit of amateurism and the ideals of fair play. Athletes in elite sports are often forced to play to the extreme limits of the rules in order to maximize their chances of winning. This makes them poor role models for amateurs and fans. The large sums of money at stake increase the temptations to various forms of cheating, such as unfair play, doping, match fixing, bribery, etc. Among the concerns are also sponsorships with unhealthy products and the gambling industry. The competition for exclusive transmission rights to popular sports events has driven up prices to such levels that several countries have implemented anti-siphoning laws to make sure that consumers have free access to watch these events. Religion The application of mediatization theory to the study of religion was initiated by Stig Hjarvard with a main focus on Northern Europe. Hjarvard described how the media have gradually taken over many of the social functions that used to be performed by religious institutions, such as rituals, worship, mourning, celebration, and spiritual guidance. This can be considered part of a general process of modernization and secularization. Religious activities are less controlled and organized by the church and instead subsumed under the media logic and delivered through genres like news, documentaries, drama, comedy, and entertainment. The mass media and the entertainment industry are combining aspects of folk religion such as trolls, vampires, and magic with the iconography and liturgy of institutionalized religions into a mixture that Hjarvard calls banal religion. Television shows depicting astrology, séances, exorcism, chiromancy, etc. are legitimizing superstition and supporting an individualization of belief while the church's control over access to religious texts is weakened. Such TV shows, as well as novels and films like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, and computer games such as the World of Warcraft are all sources of religious imagination. Hjarvard argues that these representations of banal religion are not irrelevant, but fundamental in the production of religious thoughts and feelings where the institutionalized religious texts and symbols arise as secondary features, in a sense as rationalization after the fact. David Morgan is criticizing Hjarvard's concept of mediatization for being limited to a specific historical context. Morgan argues that the mediatization of religion is not necessarily connected with modernization and secularization. Historically, communication through music, art, and writing have had a degree of ubiquity similar to the modern mass media and have shaped human society in distinct ways. Religious life has always been mediated when people believe that séances communicate with spirits of the dead, prayers communicate with deities, icons establish connection to the heavenly saint, and sacred objects are facilitating interaction between human actors and the divine. Morgan shows how British evangelical printed texts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries shaped religious life. These texts were not endorsed by the state or the church, but still explicitly Christian. This is an example of mediatization that was not connected with secularization or modernization. Morgan agrees, however, that mediatization remains a useful concept for describing the effects of certain forms of media use. The intrigue or mystery that many find in fiction, exotic religions, occultism, astrology, dreams, etc. — what Hjarvard calls banal religion — suggests that images, music, and objects carry a potency that operates independent of explicit or institutional religion. Studies of religious media in other parts of the world confirm that mediatization is not necessarily connected with secularization. Televangelism has a large influence on religious life in Northern America. The American concept of televangelism has been copied in many parts of the world and adopted not only by Christian evangelists, but also by Islamic, Buddhist, and Hinduist preachers. This has led to increased competition between the established religious institutions and self-styled televangelists, between different sects, and between different religions. Televangelism is a powerful medium for fund raising which has enabled televangelists to establish large business enterprises combining religious activity with entertainment and trade. The internet has opened many new possibilities for religious communication. Memorial sites on the internet have supplemented or replaced physical cemeteries. Dalai Lama performs religious ceremonies online which help Tibetan refugees and diaspora recreate religious practices outside of Tibet. Many religious communities around the world are using interactive internet media to communicate with believers, transmit services, give directions and advise, answer questions, and even engage in dialogues between different religions. The social media allow a more democratic and less centralized religious dialogue. Sharing of religious texts, images, and videos on social media is often encouraged by religious communities. Unlike the traditional commercial information economy based on copyright, some televangelists in Singapore are deliberately sharing their media products without intellectual property rights in order to allow their followers to share these works on social media and make new combinations, compositions, and mash-up's such that new ideas can develop and thrive. Subcultures Hjarvard and Peterson summarize the media's role in cultural change: "(1) When various forms of subcultures try to make use of media for their own purposes, they often become (re-)embedded into mainstream culture; (2) National cultural policies often serve as levers for increased mediatization; (3) Mediatization involves a transformation of the ways in which authority and expertise are performed and reputation is acquired and defended; and (4) Technological developments shape the media's affordances and thus the particular path of mediatization." Mediatization research explores the ways in which media are embedded in cultural transformation. For example, "tactical" mediatization designates the response of community organizations and activists to wider technological changes. Kim Sawchuk, professor in Communication Studies, worked with a group of elderly who managed to retain their own agency in this context. For the elderly, the pressure to mediatize comes from various institutions that are transitioning to online services (government agencies, funding, banks, etc.), among other things. A tactical approach to media is one that comes from those who are subordinates within these systems. It means to implement work-arounds to make the technologies work for them. For example, in the case of the elderly group she studies, they borrowed equipment to produce video capsules explaining their mandate and the importance of this mandate for their communities, which allowed them to reach new audiences while keeping the tone and style of face-to-face communication they privilege in their day-to-day practice. Doing this, they also subverted expectations about the ability of the elderly to use new media effectively. Another example of study is one that is focused on the media-related practices of graffiti writers and skaters, showing how media integrate and modulate their everyday practices. The analysis also demonstrates how the mediatization of these subcultural groups brings them to become part of mainstream culture, changes their rebellious and oppositional image and engages them with the global commercialization culture. Another example is how media's omnipresence informs the ways Femen's protests may take place on public scenes, allow communication between individual bodies and a shared understanding of activist imaginary. It aims to analyse how their practices are moulded by the media and how these are staged in manners that facilitate spreadability. See also Attention economy Concentration of media ownership Digital citizen Echo chamber (media) Mass communication Media culture Media literacy Media psychology Mediacracy Media effects Media studies Mediated Stylistics Social aspects of television References Media studies Sociological terminology Political science theories

History of democracy

A democracy is a political system, or a system of decision-making within an institution, organization, or state, in which members have a share of power. Modern democracies are characterized by two capabilities of their citizens that differentiate them fundamentally from earlier forms of government: to intervene in society and have their sovereign (e.g., their representatives) held accountable to the international laws of other governments of their kind. Democratic government is commonly juxtaposed with oligarchic and monarchic systems, which are ruled by a minority and a sole monarch respectively. Democracy is generally associated with the efforts of the ancient Greeks, whom 18th-century intellectuals considered the founders of Western civilization. These individuals attempted to leverage these early democratic experiments into a new template for post-monarchical political organization. The extent to which these 18th-century democratic revivalists succeeded in turning the democratic ideals of the ancient Greeks into the dominant political institution of the next 300 years is hardly debatable, even if the moral justifications they often employed might be. Nevertheless, the critical historical juncture catalyzed by the resurrection of democratic ideals and institutions fundamentally transformed the ensuing centuries and has dominated the international landscape since the dismantling of the final vestige of the empire following the end of the Second World War. Modern representative democracies attempt to bridge the gap between Rousseau's depiction of the state of nature and Hobbes's depiction of society as inevitably authoritarian through 'social contracts' that enshrine the rights of the citizens, curtail the power of the state, and grant agency through the right to vote. Antiquity Prehistoric origins Anthropologists have identified forms of proto-democracy that date back to small bands of hunter-gatherers that predate the establishment of agrarian, sedentary societies and still exist virtually unchanged in isolated indigenous groups today. In these groups of generally 50–100 individuals, often tied closely by familial bonds, decisions are reached by consensus or majority and many times without the designation of any specific chief. These types of democracy are commonly identified as tribalism, or primitive democracy. In this sense, a primitive democracy usually takes shape in small communities or villages when there are face-to-face discussions in a village, council or with a leader who has the backing of village elders or other cooperative forms of government. This becomes more complex on a larger scale, such as when the village and city are examined more broadly as political communities. All other forms of rule – including monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, and oligarchy – have flourished in more urban centers, often those with concentrated populations. David Graeber and David Wengrow, in The Dawn of Everything, argue in contrast that cities and early settlements were more varied and unpredictable in terms of how their political systems alternated and evolved from more to less democratic. The concepts (and name) of democracy and constitution as a form of government originated in ancient Athens circa 508 BCE. In ancient Greece, where there were many city-states with different forms of government, democracy ("rule by the ", i.e. citizen body) was contrasted with governance by elites (aristocracy, literally "rule by the best"), by one person (monarchy), by tyrants (tyranny), etc. Potential proto-democratic societies Although fifth-century BCE Athens is widely considered to have been the first state to develop a sophisticated system of rule that we today call democracy, in recent decades scholars have explored the possibility that advancements toward democratic government occurred independently in the Near East, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere before this. Mesopotamia Studying pre-Babylonian Mesopotamia, Thorkild Jacobsen used Sumerian epic, myth, and historical records to identify what he has called primitive democracy. By this, Jacobsen means a government in which ultimate power rests with the mass of free (non-slave) male citizens, although "the various functions of government are as yet little specialised [and] the power structure is loose". In early Sumer, kings like Gilgamesh did not hold the autocratic power that later Mesopotamian rulers wielded. Rather, major city-states functioned with councils of elders and "young men" (likely free men bearing arms) that possessed the final political authority, and had to be consulted on all major issues such as war. The work has gained little outright acceptance. Scholars criticize the use of the word "democracy" in this context since the same evidence also can be interpreted to demonstrate a power struggle between primitive monarchy and noble classes, a struggle in which the common people function more like pawns rather than any kind of sovereign authority. Jacobsen conceded that the vagueness of the evidence prohibits the separation between the Mesopotamian democracy from a primitive oligarchy. Phoenicia The practice of "governing by assembly" was at least part of how ancient Phoenicians made important decisions. One source is the story of Wen-Amon, an Egyptian trader who travelled north to the Phoenician city of Byblos around 1100 BCE to trade for Phoenician lumber. After loading his lumber, a group of pirates surrounded Wen-Amon and his cargo ship. The Phoenician prince of Byblos was called in to fix the problem, whereupon he summoned his mw-'dwt, an old Semitic word meaning assembly, to reach a decision. This shows that Byblos was ruled in part by a popular assembly (drawn from what subpopulation and equipped with exactly what power is not known exactly). Indian subcontinent Another claim for early democratic institutions comes from the independent "republics" of India, s and s, which existed as early as the 6th century BCE and persisted in some areas until the 4th century. In addition, Diodorus—a Greek historian who wrote two centuries after the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of India—mentions that independent and democratic states existed in India. Key characteristics of the seem to include a monarch, usually known by the name raja, and a deliberative assembly. The assembly met regularly. It discussed all major state decisions. At least in some states, attendance was open to all free men. This body also had full financial, administrative, and judicial authority. Other officers, who rarely receive any mention, obeyed the decisions of the assembly. Elected by the , the monarch apparently always belonged to a family of the noble class of Kshatriya Varna. The monarch coordinated his activities with the assembly; in some states, he did so with a council of other nobles. The Licchavis had a primary governing body of 7,077 rajas, presumably the heads of the most important families. In contrast, the Shakyas, during the period around Gautama Buddha, had the assembly open to all men, rich and poor. Early "republics" or , such as Mallakas, centered in the city of Kusinagara, and the Vajji (or Vṛji) League, centered in the city of Vaishali, existed as early as the 6th century BCE and persisted in some areas until the 4th century CE. The most famous clan amongst the ruling confederate tribes of the Vajji Mahajanapada were the Licchavis. The Magadha kingdom included republican communities such as the community of Rajakumara. Villages had their own assemblies under their local chiefs called Gramakas. Their administrations were divided into executive, judicial, and military functions. Scholars differ over how best to describe these governments, and the vague, sporadic quality of the evidence allows for wide disagreements. Some emphasize the central role of the assemblies and thus tout them as democracies; other scholars focus on the upper-class domination of the leadership and possible control of the assembly and see an oligarchy or an aristocracy. Despite the assembly's obvious power, it has not yet been established whether the composition and participation were truly popular. The first main obstacle is the lack of evidence describing the popular power of the assembly. This is reflected in the Arthashastra, an ancient handbook for monarchs on how to rule efficiently. It contains a chapter on how to deal with the sangas, which includes injunctions on manipulating the noble leaders, yet it does not mention how to influence the mass of the citizens—a surprising omission if democratic bodies, not the aristocratic families, actively controlled the republican governments. Another issue is the persistence of the four-tiered Varna class system. The duties and privileges on the members of each particular caste—rigid enough to prohibit someone sharing a meal with those of another order—might have affected the roles members were expected to play in the state, regardless of the formality of the institutions. A central tenet of democracy is the notion of shared decision-making power. The absence of any concrete notion of citizen equality across these caste system boundaries leads many scholars to claim that the true nature of s and s is not comparable to truly democratic institutions. Sparta Ancient Greece, in its early period, was a loose collection of independent city states called poleis. Many of these poleis were oligarchies. The most prominent Greek oligarchy, and the state with which democratic Athens is most often and most fruitfully compared, was Sparta. Yet Sparta, in its rejection of private wealth as a primary social differentiator, was a peculiar kind of oligarchy and some scholars note its resemblance to democracy. In Spartan government, the political power was divided between four bodies: two Spartan kings (diarchy), (Council of Gerontes (elders), including the two kings), the ephors (representatives of the citizens who oversaw the kings), and the (assembly of Spartans). The two kings served as the head of the government. They ruled simultaneously, but they came from two separate lines. The dual kingship diluted the effective power of the executive office. The kings shared their judicial functions with other members of the . The members of the had to be over the age of 60 and were elected for life. In theory, any Spartan over that age could stand for election. However, in practice, they were selected from wealthy, aristocratic families. The gerousia possessed the crucial power of legislative initiative. Apella, the most democratic element, was the assembly where Spartans above the age of 30 elected the members of the gerousia and the ephors, and accepted or rejected gerousia's proposals. Finally, the five ephors were Spartans chosen in apella to oversee the actions of the kings and other public officials and, if necessary, depose them. They served for one year and could not be re-elected for a second term. Over the years, the ephors held great influence on the formation of foreign policy and acted as the main executive body of the state. Additionally, they had full responsibility for the Spartan educational system, which was essential for maintaining the high standards of the Spartan army. As Aristotle noted, ephors were the most important key institution of the state, but because often they were appointed from the whole social body it resulted in very poor men holding office, with the ensuing possibility that they could easily be bribed. The creator of the Spartan system of rule was the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus. He is associated with the drastic reforms that were instituted in Sparta after the revolt of the helots in the second half of the 7th century BCE. In order to prevent another helot revolt, Lycurgus devised the highly militarized communal system that made Sparta unique among the city-states of Greece. All his reforms were directed towards the three Spartan virtues: equality (among citizens), military fitness, and austerity. It is also probable that Lycurgus delineated the powers of the two traditional organs of the Spartan government, the and the . The reforms of Lycurgus were written as a list of rules/laws called Great Rhetra, making it the world's first written constitution. In the following centuries, Sparta became a military superpower, and its system of rule was admired throughout the Greek world for its political stability. In particular, the concept of equality played an important role in Spartan society. The Spartans referred to themselves as (, men of equal status). It was also reflected in the Spartan public educational system, , where all citizens irrespective of wealth or status had the same education. This was admired almost universally by contemporaries, from historians such as Herodotus and Xenophon to philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. In addition, the Spartan women, unlike elsewhere, enjoyed "every kind of luxury and intemperance" including rights such as the right to inheritance, property ownership, and public education. Overall, the Spartans were relatively free to criticize their kings and they were able to depose and exile them. However, despite these 'democratic' elements in the Spartan constitution, there are two cardinal criticisms, classifying Sparta as an oligarchy. First, individual freedom was restricted, since as Plutarch writes "no man was allowed to live as he wished", but as in a "military camp" all were engaged in the public service of their . And second, the effectively maintained the biggest share of power of the various governmental bodies. The political stability of Sparta also meant that no significant changes in the constitution were made. The oligarchic elements of Sparta became even stronger, especially after the influx of gold and silver from the victories in the Persian Wars. In addition, Athens, after the Persian Wars, was becoming the hegemonic power in the Greek world and disagreements between Sparta and Athens over supremacy emerged. These led to a series of armed conflicts known as the Peloponnesian War, with Sparta prevailing in the end. However, the war exhausted both and Sparta was in turn humbled by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE. It was all brought to an end a few years later, when Philip II of Macedon crushed what remained of the power of the factional city-states to his South. Athens Athens is often regarded by western scholars as the birthplace of democracy and remains an important reference point for democracy, as evidenced by the etymological origins of democracy in English and many other languages being traced back to the Greek words '(common) people' and 'force/might'. Literature about the Athenian democracy spans over centuries with the earliest works being The Republic of Plato and Politics of Aristotle, continuing in the 16th century with Discourses of Niccolò Machiavelli. Athens emerged in the 7th century BCE, like many other , with a dominating powerful aristocracy. However, this domination led to exploitation, creating significant economic, political, and social problems. These problems were exacerbated early in the 6th century BCE; and, as "the many were enslaved to few, the people rose against the notables". At the same time, a number of popular revolutions disrupted traditional aristocracies. This included Sparta in the second half of the 7th century BCE. The constitutional reforms implemented by Lycurgus in Sparta introduced a hoplite state that showed, in turn, how inherited governments can be changed and lead to military victory. After a period of unrest between the rich and poor, Athenians of all classes turned to Solon to act as a mediator between rival factions, and reached a generally satisfactory solution to their problems. Solon and the foundations of democracy Solon ( BCE), an Athenian (Greek) of noble descent but moderate means, was a lyric poet and later a lawmaker; Plutarch ranked him as one of the Seven Sages of the ancient world. Solon attempted to satisfy all sides by alleviating the suffering of the poor majority without removing all the privileges of the rich minority. Solon divided the Athenians into four property classes, with different rights and duties for each. As the Rhetra did in Lycurgian Sparta, Solon formalized the composition and functions of the governmental bodies. All citizens gained the right to attend the Ecclesia (Assembly) and to vote. The Ecclesia became, in principle, the sovereign body, entitled to pass laws and decrees, elect officials, and hear appeals from the most important decisions of the courts. All but those in the poorest group might serve, a year at a time, on a new Boule of 400, which was to prepare the agenda for the Ecclesia. The higher governmental posts, those of the archons (magistrates), were reserved for citizens of the top two income groups. The retired archons became members of the Areopagus (Council of the Hill of Ares), which like the Gerousia in Sparta, was able to check improper actions of the newly powerful Ecclesia. Solon created a mixed timocratic and democratic system of institutions. Overall, Solon devised the reforms of 594 BCE to avert the political, economic, and moral decline in archaic Athens and gave Athens its first comprehensive code of law. The constitutional reforms eliminated enslavement of Athenians by Athenians, established rules for legal redress against over-reaching aristocratic archons, and assigned political privileges on the basis of productive wealth rather than of noble birth. Some of Solon's reforms failed in the short term, yet he is often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. Democracy under Cleisthenes and Pericles Even though the Solonian reorganization of the constitution improved the economic position of the Athenian lower classes, it did not eliminate the bitter aristocratic contentions for control of the archonship, the chief executive post. Peisistratos became tyrant of Athens three times from 561 BCE and remained in power until his death in 527 BCE. His sons Hippias and Hipparchus succeeded him. After the fall of tyranny (510 BCE) and before the year 508–507 BCE was over, Cleisthenes proposed a complete reform of the system of government, which later was approved by the popular . Cleisthenes reorganized the population of citizens into ten tribes, with the aim to change the basis of political organization from the family loyalties to political ones, and improve the army's organization. He also introduced the principle of equality of rights for all male citizens, , by expanding access to power to more citizens. During this period, Athenians first used the word "democracy" ( – "rule by the people") to define their new system of government. In the next generation, Athens entered its Golden Age, becoming a great center of literature and art. Greek victories in Persian Wars (499–449 BCE) encouraged the poorest Athenians (who participated in the military campaigns) to demand a greater say in the running of their city. In the late 460s, Ephialtes and Pericles presided over a radicalization of power that shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of society, by passing laws which severely limited the powers of the Council of the Areopagus and allowed thetes (Athenians without wealth) to occupy public office. Pericles became distinguished as the Athenians' greatest democratic leader, even though he has been accused of running a political machine. In the following passage, Thucydides recorded Pericles, in the funeral oration, describing the Athenian system of rule: The Athenian democracy of Cleisthenes and Pericles was based on freedom of citizens (through the reforms of Solon) and on equality of citizens – introduced by Cleisthenes and later expanded by Ephialtes and Pericles. To preserve these principles, the Athenians used lot for selecting officials. Casting lots aimed to ensure that all citizens were "equally" qualified for office, and to avoid any corruption allotment machines were used. Moreover, in most positions chosen by lot, Athenian citizens could not be selected more than once; this rotation in office meant that no-one could build up a power base through staying in a particular position. The courts formed another important political institution in Athens; they were composed of a large number of juries with no judges, and they were selected by lot on a daily basis from an annual pool, also chosen by lot. The courts had unlimited power to control the other bodies of the government and its political leaders. Participation by the citizens selected was mandatory, and a modest financial compensation was given to citizens whose livelihood was affected by being "drafted" to office. The only officials chosen by elections, one from each tribe, were the (generals), where military knowledge was required, and the treasurers, who had to be wealthy, since any funds revealed to have been embezzled were recovered from a treasurer's private fortune. Debate was open to all present and decisions in all matters of policy were taken by majority vote in the (compare direct democracy), in which all male citizens could participate (in some cases with a quorum of 6000). The decisions taken in the were executed by the Boule of 500, which had already approved the agenda for the Ecclesia. The Athenian Boule was elected by lot every year and no citizen could serve more than twice. Overall, the Athenian democracy was not only direct in the sense that decisions were made by the assembled people, but also directest in the sense that the people through the assembly, boule, and courts of law controlled the entire political process and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in the public business. And even though the rights of the individual (probably) were not secured by the Athenian constitution in the modern sense, the Athenians enjoyed their liberties not in opposition to the government, but by living in a city that was not subject to another power and by not being subjects themselves to the rule of another person. The birth of political philosophy Within the Athenian democratic environment, many philosophers from all over the Greek world gathered to develop their theories. Socrates (470–399 BCE) was the first to raise the question, further expanded by his pupil Plato (died 348/347), about the relation/position of an individual within a community. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) continued the work of his teacher, Plato, and laid the foundations of political philosophy. The political philosophy developed in Athens was, in the words of Peter Hall, "in a form so complete that hardly added anyone of moment to it for over a millennium". Aristotle systematically analyzed the different systems of rule that the numerous Greek city-states had and divided them into three categories based on how many ruled: the many (democracy/polity), the few (oligarchy/aristocracy), a single person (tyranny, or today: autocracy/monarchy). For Aristotle, the underlying principles of democracy are reflected in his work Politics: Decline, revival, and criticisms The Athenian democracy, in its two centuries of life-time, twice voted against its democratic constitution (both times during the crisis at the end of the Pelopponesian War of 431 to 404 BCE), establishing first the Four Hundred (in 411 BCE) and second Sparta's puppet régime of the Thirty Tyrants (in 404 BCE). Both votes took place under manipulation and pressure, but democracy was recovered in less than a year in both cases. Reforms following the restoration of democracy after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants removed most law-making authority from the Assembly and placed it in randomly selected law-making juries known as . Athens restored its democratic constitution again after King Philip II of Macedon (reigned 359–336 BCE) and later Alexander the Great (reigned 336–323 BCE) unified Greece, but it was politically overshadowed by the Hellenistic empires. Finally, after the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BCE, Athens was restricted to matters of local administration. However, democracy in Athens declined not only due to external powers, but due to its citizens, such as Plato and his student Aristotle. Because of their influential works, after the rediscovery of classics during the Renaissance, Sparta's political stability was praised, while the Periclean democracy was described as a system of rule where either the less well-born, the mob (as a collective tyrant), or the poorer classes held power. Only centuries afterwards, after the publication of A History of Greece by George Grote from 1846 onwards, did modern political thinkers start to view the Athenian democracy of Pericles positively. In the late 20th century scholars re-examined the Athenian system of rule as a model of empowering citizens and as a "post-modern" example for communities and organizations alike. Rome Rome's history has helped preserve the concept of democracy over the centuries. The Romans invented the concept of classics and many works from Ancient Greece were preserved. Additionally, the Roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries, and today's modern (representative) democracies imitate more the Roman than the Greek models. The Roman Republic Rome was a city-state in Italy next to powerful neighbors; Etruscans had built city-states throughout central Italy since the 13th century BCE and in the south were Greek colonies. Similar to other city-states, Rome was ruled by a king elected by the Assemblies. However, social unrest and the pressure of external threats led in 510 BCE the last king to be deposed by a group of aristocrats led by Lucius Junius Brutus. A new constitution was crafted, but the conflict between the ruling families (patricians) and the rest of the population, the plebeians continued. The plebs were demanding for definite, written, and secular laws. The patrician priests, who were the recorders and interpreters of the statutes, by keeping their records secret used their monopoly against social change. After a long resistance to the new demands, the Senate in 454 BCE sent a commission of three patricians to Greece to study and report on the legislation of Solon and other lawmakers. When they returned, the Assembly in 451 BCE chose ten men – a – to formulate a new code, and gave them supreme governmental power in Rome for two years. This commission, under the supervision of a resolute reactionary, Appius Claudius, transformed the old customary law of Rome into Twelve Tables and submitted them to the Assembly (which passed them with some changes) and they were displayed in the Forum for all who would and could read. The Twelve Tables recognised certain rights and by the 4th century BCE, the plebs were given the right to stand for consulship and other major offices of the state. The political structure as outlined in the Roman constitution resembled a mixed constitution and its constituent parts were comparable to those of the Spartan constitution: two consuls, embodying the monarchic form; the Senate, embodying the aristocratic form; and the people through the assemblies. The consul was the highest ranking ordinary magistrate. Consuls had power in both civil and military matters. While in the city of Rome, the consuls were the head of the Roman government and they would preside over the Senate and the assemblies. While abroad, each consul would command an army. The Senate passed decrees, which were called and were official advice to a magistrate. However, in practice, it was difficult for a magistrate to ignore the Senate's advice. The focus of the Roman Senate was directed towards foreign policy. Though it technically had no official role in the management of military conflict, the Senate ultimately was the force that oversaw such affairs. Also, it managed Rome's civil administration. The requirements for becoming a senator included having at least 100,000 denarii worth of land, being born of the patrician (noble aristocrats) class, and having held public office at least once before. New Senators had to be approved by the sitting members. The people of Rome through the assemblies had the final say regarding the election of magistrates, the enactment of new laws, the carrying out of capital punishment, the declaration of war and peace, and the creation (or dissolution) of alliances. Despite the obvious power the assemblies had, in practice, the assemblies were the least powerful of the other bodies of government. An assembly was legal only if summoned by a magistrate and it was restricted from any legislative initiative or the ability to debate. And even the candidates for public office, as Livy writes: "levels were designed so that no one appeared to be excluded from an election and yet all of the clout resided with the leading men". Moreover, the unequal weight of votes was making a rare practice for asking the lowest classes for their votes. Roman stability, in Polybius' assessment, was owing to the checks each element put on the superiority of any other: a consul at war, for example, required the cooperation of the Senate and the people if he hoped to secure victory and glory, and could not be indifferent to their wishes. This was not to say that the balance was in every way even: Polybius observes that the superiority of the Roman to the Carthaginian constitution (another mixed constitution) at the time of the Hannibalic War was an effect of the latter's greater inclination toward democracy than to aristocracy. Moreover, recent attempts to posit for Rome personal freedom in the Greek sense – : living as you like – have fallen on stony ground, since (which was an ideology and way of life in the democratic Athens) was anathema in the Roman eyes. Rome's core values included order, hierarchy, discipline, and obedience. These values were enforced with laws regulating the private life of an individual. The laws were applied in particular to the upper classes, since the upper classes were the source of Roman moral examples. Rome became the ruler of a great Mediterranean empire. The new provinces brought wealth to Italy, and fortunes were made through mineral concessions and enormous slave run estates. Slaves were imported to Italy and wealthy landowners soon began to buy up and displace the original peasant farmers. By the late 2nd century this led to renewed conflict between the rich and poor and demands from the latter for reform of the constitution. The background of social unease and the inability of the traditional republican constitutions to adapt to the needs of the growing empire led to the rise of a series of over-mighty generals, championing the cause of either the rich or the poor, in the last century BCE. Transition to empire Over the next few hundred years, various generals would bypass or overthrow the Senate for various reasons, mostly to address perceived injustices, either against themselves or against poorer citizens or soldiers. One of those generals was Julius Caesar, where he marched on Rome and took supreme power over the republic. Caesar's career was cut short by his assassination at Rome in 44 BCE by a group of Senators including Marcus Junius Brutus. In the power vacuum that followed Caesar's assassination, his friend and chief lieutenant, Marcus Antonius, and Caesar's grandnephew Octavian who also was the adopted son of Caesar, rose to prominence. Their combined strength gave the triumvirs absolute power. However, in 31 BCE war between the two broke out. The final confrontation occurred on 2 September 31 BCE, at the naval Battle of Actium where the fleet of Octavian under the command of Agrippa routed Antony's fleet. Thereafter, there was no one left in the Roman Republic who wanted to, or could stand against Octavian, and the adopted son of Caesar moved to take absolute control. Octavian left the majority of Republican institutions intact, though he influenced everything using personal authority and ultimately controlled the final decisions, having the military might to back up his rule if necessary. By 27 BCE the transition, though subtle, disguised, and relying on personal power over the power of offices, was complete. In that year, Octavian offered back all his powers to the Senate, and in a carefully staged way, the Senate refused and titled Octavian – "the revered one". He was always careful to avoid the title of – "king", and instead took on the titles of – "first citizen" and , a title given by Roman troops to their victorious commanders, completing the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Institutions in the medieval era Early institutions included: The continuations of the early Germanic thing from the Viking Age: The Witenagemot (folkmoot) of Early Medieval England, councils of advisors to the kings of the petty kingdoms and then that of a unified England before the Norman Conquest. The Frankish custom of the or Camp of Mars. In the Iberian Peninsula, in Portuguese, Leonese, Castillian, Aragonese, Catalan and Valencian customs, (or ) were periodically convened to debate the state of the Realms. The Corts of Catalonia were the first parliament of Europe that officially obtained the power to pass legislation. Tynwald, on the Isle of Man, claims to be one of the oldest continuous parliaments in the world, with roots back to the late 9th or 10th century. The , the parliament of the Icelandic Commonwealth, founded in 930. It consisted of the 39, later 55, ; each owner of a ; and each hereditary kept a tight hold on his membership, which could in principle be lent or sold. Thus, for example, when Burnt Njal's stepson wanted to enter it, Njal had to persuade the to enlarge itself so a seat would become available. But as each independent farmer in the country could choose what represented him, the system could be claimed as an early form of democracy. The has run nearly continuously to the present day. The was preceded by less elaborate "things" (assemblies) all over Northern Europe. Sicilian Parliament of the kingdom of Sicily, from 1097, one of the oldest parliaments in the world and the first legislature in the modern sense. The Thing of all Swedes, which took place annually at Uppsala at the end of February or in early March. As in Iceland, the lawspeaker presided over the assemblies, but the Swedish king functioned as a judge. A famous incident took place circa 1018, when King Olof Skötkonung wanted to pursue the war against Norway against the will of the people. Þorgnýr the Lawspeaker reminded the king in a long speech that the power resided with the Swedish people and not with the king. When the king heard the din of swords beating the shields in support of Þorgnýr's speech, he gave in. Adam of Bremen wrote that the people used to obey the king only when they thought his suggestions seemed better, although in war his power was absolute. The Swiss . In Norway: The election of Gopala in the Pala Empire (8th century). The system in early medieval Ireland. Landowners and the masters of a profession or craft were members of a local assembly, known as a . Each met in annual assembly which approved all common policies, declared war or peace on other , and accepted the election of a new "king"; normally during the old king's lifetime, as a tanist. The new king had to be descended within four generations from a previous king, so this usually became, in practice, a hereditary kingship; although some kingships alternated between lines of cousins. About 80 to 100 coexisted at any time throughout Ireland. Each controlled a more or less compact area of land which it could pretty much defend from cattle-raids, and this was divided among its members. The Ibadites of Oman, a minority sect distinct from both Sunni and Shia Muslims, have traditionally chosen their leaders via community-wide elections of qualified candidates starting in the 8th century. They were distinguished early on in the region by their belief that the ruler needed the consent of the ruled. The leader exercised both religious and secular rule. The guilds, of economic, social and religious natures, in the later Middle Ages elected officers for yearly terms. The city-states (republics) of medieval Italy, as Venice and Florence, and similar city-states in Switzerland, Flanders and the Hanseatic league had not a modern democratic system but a guild democratic system. The Italian cities in the middle medieval period had "lobbies war" democracies without institutional guarantee systems (a full developed balance of powers). During late medieval and renaissance periods, Venice became an oligarchy and others became ("lordships"). They were, in any case in late medieval times, not nearly as democratic as the Athenian-influenced city-states of Ancient Greece (discussed above), but they served as focal points for early modern democracy. , – popular assemblies in Slavic countries. In Poland, developed in 1182 into the – the Polish parliament. The was the highest legislature and judicial authority in the republics of Novgorod until 1478 and Pskov until 1510. The system of the Basque Country in which farmholders of a rural area connected to a particular church would meet to reach decisions on issues affecting the community and to elect representatives to the provincial /. The rise of democratic parliaments in England and Scotland: Magna Carta (1215) limiting the authority of the king; first representative parliament (1265). The version of Magna Carta signed by King John implicitly supported what became the English writ of habeas corpus, safeguarding individual freedom against unlawful imprisonment with right to appeal. The emergence of petitioning in the 13th century is some of the earliest evidence of this parliament being used as a forum to address the general grievances of ordinary people. Indigenous peoples of the Americas Professor of anthropology Jack Weatherford has argued that the ideas leading to the United States Constitution and democracy derived from various indigenous peoples of the Americas including the Iroquois. Weatherford speculated that this democracy was founded between the years 1000–1450, that it lasted several hundred years, and that the U.S. democratic system was continually changed and improved by the influence of Native Americans throughout North America. Elizabeth Tooker, a professor of anthropology at Temple University and an authority on the culture and history of the Northern Iroquois, has reviewed Weatherford's claims and concluded they are myth rather than fact. The idea that North American Indians had a democratic culture is several decades old, but not usually expressed within historical literature. The relationship between the Iroquois League and the Constitution is based on a portion of a letter written by Benjamin Franklin and a speech by the Iroquois chief Canassatego in 1744. Tooker concluded that the documents only indicate that some groups of Iroquois and white settlers realized the advantages of a confederation, and that ultimately there is little evidence to support the idea that eighteenth century colonists were knowledgeable regarding the Iroquois system of governance. What little evidence there is regarding this system indicates chiefs of different tribes were permitted representation in the Iroquois League council, and this ability to represent the tribe was hereditary. The council itself did not practice representative government, and there were no elections; deceased chiefs' successors were selected by the most senior woman within the hereditary lineage in consultation with other women in the clan. Decision making occurred through lengthy discussion and decisions were unanimous, with topics discussed being introduced by a single tribe. Tooker concludes that "...there is virtually no evidence that the framers borrowed from the Iroquois" and that the myth is largely based on a claim made by Iroquois linguist and ethnographer J.N.B. Hewitt which was exaggerated and misinterpreted after his death in 1937. The Aztecs also practiced elections, but the elected officials elected a supreme speaker, not a ruler. However, a contemporary civilisation, Tlaxcallan, along with other Mesoamerican city states, are likely to have practiced collective rule. Rise of democracy in modern national governments Early Modern Era milestones Golden Liberty or the Nobles' Democracy (Rzeczpospolita Szlachecka) arose in the Kingdom of Poland and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. This foreshadowed a democracy of about ten percent of the population of the Commonwealth, consisting of the nobility, who were an electorate for the office of the King. They observed Nihil novi of 1505, Pacta conventa and King Henry's Articles (1573). See also: Szlachta history and political privileges, Sejm of the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Organisation and politics of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. 1588: The Justificatie of Deductie in the Dutch Republic argued that the sovereignty over the Netherlands was not in the hands of the monarch, but in those of the States-General, an assembly consisting of nobles and representatives of cities from all over the Netherlands. Furthermore, it decided that the sovereignty of the states was better guaranteed by the assembly, instead of a singular autocrat. 1610: The Case of Proclamations in England decided that "the King by his proclamation or other ways cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm" and that "the King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him." 1610: Dr. Bonham's Case decided that "in many cases, the common law will control Acts of Parliament". 1619: The Virginia House of Burgesses, the first representative legislative body in the New World, is established. 1620: The Mayflower Compact, an agreement among the Pilgrims, and fellow voyagers on forming a government among themselves, based on majority rule, is signed. 1628: During a period of renewed interest in Magna Carta, the Petition of Right was passed by the Parliament of England. It established, among other things, the illegality of taxation without parliamentary consent and of arbitrary imprisonment. 1642–1651: The idea of the political party with factions took form in Britain around the time of the English Civil War. Soldiers from the Parliamentarian New Model Army and a faction of Levellers freely debated rights to political representation during the Putney Debates of 1647. The Levellers published a newspaper (The Moderate) and pioneered political petitions, pamphleteering and party colours. Later, the pre-war Royalist (then Cavalier) and opposing Parliamentarian groupings became the Tory party and the Whigs in the Parliament. 1679: English Act of Habeas Corpus, safeguarding individual freedom against unlawful imprisonment with right to appeal; one of the documents integral to the constitution of the United Kingdom and the history of the parliament of the United Kingdom. 1682: William Penn wrote his Frame of Government of Pennsylvania. The document gave the colony a representative legislature and granted liberal freedoms to the colony's citizens. 1689: The Bill of Rights 1689, enacted by Parliament, set out the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament, and limited the power of the monarch. It ensured (with the Glorious Revolution of 1688) that, unlike much of the rest of Europe, royal absolutism would not prevail. 1689: John Locke published the Two Treatises of Government, attacking monarchical absolutism and promoting social contract theory and the consent of the governed. Eighteenth and nineteenth century milestones 1707: The first Parliament of Great Britain is established after the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland under the Acts of Union 1707, succeeding the English parliament. From around 1721–1742, Robert Walpole, regarded as the first prime minister of Great Britain, chaired cabinet meetings, appointed all other ministers, and developed the doctrine of cabinet solidarity. 1755: The Corsican Republic led by Pasquale Paoli with the Corsican Constitution From the late 1770s: new Constitutions and Bills explicitly describing and limiting the authority of powerholders, many based on the English Bill of Rights (1689). Historian Norman Davies calls the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Constitution of May 3, 1791 "the first constitution of its kind in Europe". The United States: the Founding Fathers rejected limited 'democracy' run by traditionally defined aristocrats, the creation of a legally defined "Title of Nobility" is forbidden by the Constitution. The Americans, as with the British, took their cue from the Roman republic model: only the patrician classes were involved in government. 1776: Virginia Declaration of Rights is published; the American Declaration of Independence proclaims that "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." United States Constitution ratified in 1788, created bicameral legislature with members of the House of Representatives elected "by the People of the several states," and members of the Senate elected by the state legislatures. The Constitution did not originally define who was eligible to vote, leaving that to the constituent states, which mostly enfranchised only adult white males who owned land. 1791: the United States Bill of Rights ratified. 1790s: First Party System in U.S. involves invention of locally rooted political parties in the United States; networks of party newspapers; new canvassing techniques; use of caucus to select candidates; fixed party names; party loyalty; party platform (Jefferson 1799); 1800: peaceful transition between parties 1780s: development of social movements identifying themselves with the term 'democracy': Political clashes between 'aristocrats' and 'democrats' in Benelux countries changed the semi-negative meaning of the word 'democracy' in Europe, which was until then regarded as synonymous with anarchy, into a much more positive opposite of 'aristocracy'. 1789–1799: the French Revolution The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, is adopted on 26 August 1789 and declares that "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights" and proclaimed the universal character of human rights. Universal male suffrage established for the election of the National Convention in September 1792, but revoked by the Directory in 1795. Slavery abolished in the French colonies by the National Convention on 4 February 1794, with Black people made equal to White people ("All men, without distinction of color, residing in the colonies are French citizens and will enjoy all the rights assured by the Constitution"). Slavery was re-established by Napoleon in 1802. 1791: The Haitian Revolution a successful slave revolution, established a free republic. 1792: Local elections instituted in Freetown colony in December 1792, in which Nova Scotian immigrants could elect tythingmen and hundredors. The United Kingdom 1807: The Slave Trade Act banned the trade across the British Empire after which the U.K. established the Blockade of Africa and enacted international treaties to combat foreign slave traders. 1832: The passing of the Great Reform Act, which gave representation to previously under represented urban areas in the U.K. and extended the voting franchise to a wider population. Followed later in the 19th century and 20th century with several further Reform Acts. 1833: The Slavery Abolition Act was passed, which took effect across the British Empire from 1 August 1834. 1810: 24 of September: Opening session of the Cortes of Cádiz, with representatives of all Spanish provinces, including those in America. 1820: First Cortes Gerais in Portugal under a Constitutional Charter. 1835: Serbia's first modern constitution. 1837: February 3: Local election in South Africa (British colony) in the city of Beaufort West, the first city organizing the election of a municipal council after the Cape Town Ordinance of 1836 (Order 9 from 1836) 1844: The Greek Constitution of 1844 created a bicameral parliament consisting of an Assembly (Vouli) and a Senate (Gerousia). Power then passed into the hands of a group of Greek politicians, most of whom who had been commanders in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans. 1848: Universal male suffrage was re-established in France in March of that year, in the wake of the French Revolution of 1848. 1848: Following the French, the Revolutions of 1848, although in many instances forcefully put down, did result in democratic constitutions in some other European countries, among them the German states, Denmark and Netherlands. 1850s: introduction of the secret ballot in Australia; 1872 in UK; 1892 in US 1853: Black Africans given the vote for the first time in Southern Africa, in the British-administered Cape Province. 1856: US – property ownership requirements were eliminated in all states, giving suffrage to most adult white males. However, tax-paying requirements remained in five states until 1860 and in two states until the 20th century. 1870: US – 15th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibits voting rights discrimination on the basis of race, colour, or previous condition of slavery. 1878–1880: William Ewart Gladstone's UK Midlothian campaign ushered in the modern political campaign. 1893: New Zealand is the first nation to introduce universal suffrage by awarding the vote to women (universal male suffrage had been in place since 1879). 1894: South Australia is the first place to pass legislation allowing women to stand for election to parliament 1905: Persian Constitutional Revolution, first parliamentary system in middle east. 1911: UK Parliament Act restricted the unelected upper house from obstructing legislation from the elected lower house. The secret ballot The notion of a secret ballot, where one is entitled to the privacy of their votes, is taken for granted by most today by virtue of the fact that it is simply considered the norm. However, this practice was highly controversial in the 19th century; it was widely argued that no man would want to keep his vote secret unless he was ashamed of it. The two earliest systems used were the Victorian method and the South Australian method. Both were introduced in 1856 to voters in Victoria and South Australia. The Victorian method involved voters crossing out all the candidates whom he did not approve of. The South Australian method, which is more similar to what most democracies use today, had voters put a mark in the preferred candidate's corresponding box. The Victorian voting system also was not completely secret, as it was traceable by a special number. Waves of democracy in the 20th century The end of the First World War was a temporary victory for democracy in Europe, as it was preserved in France and temporarily extended to Germany. Already in 1906 full modern democratic rights, universal suffrage for all citizens was implemented constitutionally in Finland as well as a proportional representation, open list system. Likewise, the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 inaugurated a few months of liberal democracy under Alexander Kerensky until Lenin took over in October. The terrible economic consequences of the Great Depression hurt democratic forces in many countries. The 1930s became a decade of dictators in Europe and Latin America. In 1918 the United Kingdom granted the women over 30 who met a property qualification the right to vote, a second one was later passed in 1928 granting women and men equal rights. On 18 August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution was adopted which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. French women got the right to vote in 1944, but did not actually cast their ballot for the first time until April 29, 1945. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted full U.S. citizenship to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act. (The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to persons born in the U.S., but only if "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"; this latter clause excludes certain indigenous peoples.) The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on 2 June 1924. The act further enfranchised the rights of peoples resident within the boundaries of the United States. Post–World War II World War II was ultimately a victory for democracy in Western Europe, where representative governments were established that reflected the general will of their citizens. However, many countries of Central and Eastern Europe became undemocratic Soviet satellite states. In Southern Europe, a number of right-wing authoritarian dictatorships (most notably in Spain and Portugal) continued to exist. Japan had moved towards democracy during the Taishō period during the 1920s, but it was under effective military rule in the years before and during World War II. The country adopted a new constitution during the postwar Allied occupation, with initial elections in 1946. Decolonisation and civil rights movements World War II also planted seeds of democracy outside Europe and Japan, as it weakened, with the exception of the USSR and the United States, all the old colonial powers while strengthening anticolonial sentiment worldwide. Many restive colonies/possessions were promised subsequent independence in exchange for their support for embattled colonial powers during the war. In 1946, the United States granted independence to the Philippines, which preserved a democratic political system as a presidential republic until the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos. The aftermath of World War II also resulted in the United Nations' decision to partition the British Mandate into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. On 14 May 1948 the state of Israel declared independence and thus was born the first full democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system and universal suffrage. India became a Democratic Republic in 1950 after achieving independence from Great Britain in 1947. After holding its first national elections in 1952, India achieved the status of the world's largest liberal democracy with universal suffrage which it continues to hold today. Most of the former British and French colonies were independent by 1965 and at least initially democratic; those that were formerly part of the British Empire often adopted the Westminster parliamentary system. The process of decolonisation created much political upheaval in Africa and parts of Asia, with some countries experiencing often rapid changes to and from democratic and other forms of government. In the United States of America, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act enforced the 15th Amendment. The 24th Amendment ended poll taxing by removing all tax placed upon voting, which was a technique commonly used to restrict the African American vote. The Voting Rights Act also granted voting rights to all Native Americans, irrespective of their home state. The minimum voting age was reduced to 18 by the 26th Amendment in 1971. Late Cold War and post-Soviet democratication New waves of democracy swept across Southern Europe in the 1970s, as a number of right-wing nationalist dictatorships fell from power. Later, in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, the communist states in the USSR sphere of influence were also replaced with liberal democracies. Much of Eastern Europe, Latin America, East and Southeast Asia, and several Arab, central Asian and African states, and the not-yet-state that is the Palestinian Authority moved towards greater liberal democracy in the 1990s and 2000s. By the end of the century, the world had changed from having in 1900 not a single liberal democracy with universal suffrage, to 120 of the world's 192 nations, or 62% having become such democracies. 25 nations, or 13% of the world's nations had "restricted democratic practices" in 1900 and in 2000 16, or 8% of the world's nations were such restricted democracies. Other nations had, and have, various forms of non-democratic rule. The numbers are indicative of the expansion of democracy during the twentieth century, the specifics though may be open to debate (for example, New Zealand enacted universal suffrage in 1893, but this is discounted due to lack of complete sovereignty of the Māori vote). Democracy in the 21st century By region The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq led to a toppling of President Saddam Hussein and a new constitution with free and open elections.. Later, around 2011, the Arab Spring led to much upheaval, as well as to the establishing of a democracy in Tunisia and some increased democratic rights in Morocco. Egypt saw a temporary democracy before the re-establishment of military rule. The Palestinian Authority also took action to address democratic rights. In Africa, out of 55 countries, democratization seems almost stalled since 2005 because of the resistance of some 20 non-democratic regimes, most of which originated in the 1980s. In exception to this, in 2016, after losing an election, the president of the Gambia attempted to cling to power but a threatened regional military intervention forced him to leave. In 2018 dictatorships in Sudan and Algeria fell; it remains unclear what type of regimes will emerge in these two countries. In Asia, Myanmar (also known as Burma) the ruling military junta in 2011 made changes to allow certain voting-rights and released a prominent figure in the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest. Myanmar did not allow Suu Kyi to run for election. However, conditions partially changed with the election of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party and her appointment as the de facto leader of Burma (Myanmar) with the title "state councilor", as she is still not allowed to become president and therefore leads through a figurehead, Htin Kyaw. Human rights, however, have not improved. In Bhutan, in December 2005, the 4th King Jigme Singye Wangchuck announced that the first general elections would take place in 2008, and that he would abdicate the throne in favor of his eldest son. Bhutan is currently undergoing further changes to allow for a constitutional monarchy. In the Maldives, protests and political pressure led to a government reform which allowed democratic rights and presidential elections in 2008. These were however undone by a coup in 2018. Meanwhile, in Thailand military junta twice overthrew democratically elected governments ( 2006 and 2014) and in 2014 changed the constitution in order to increase their own power. The authoritarian regime of Hun Sen in Cambodia dissolved the main opposition party (Cambodia National Rescue Party) in 2017 and effectively implemented a one-man dictatorship. In Europe, Ukraine saw several protest movements leading to a switch from effective oligarchy to more democracy; , since the Maidan revolution of February 2014 Ukraine has seen two presidential elections and the peaceful transfer of power. Not all movement has promoted democracy, however. In Poland and Hungary, so-called "illiberal democracies" have taken hold, with the ruling parties in both countries considered by the EU and by civil society to be working to undermine democratic governance. Within English-speaking Western democracies, "protection-based" attitudes combining cultural conservatism and leftist economic attitudes were the strongest predictor of support for authoritarian modes of governance. Overall Despite the number of democratic states has continued to grow since 2006, the share of weaker electoral democracies has grown significantly. This is the strongest causal factor behind fragile democracies. As of 2020, authoritarianism and populism are on the rise around the world, with the number of people living in democracies less than the end of the Cold War. "Democratic backsliding" in the 2010s were attributed to economic inequality and social discontent, personalism, poor management of COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other factors such as government manipulation of civil society, "toxic polarization", foreign disinformation campaigns, racism and nativism, excessive executive power, and decreased power of the opposition. Large parts of the world, such as China, Russia, Central and South East Asia, the Middle East and much of Africa have consolidated authoritarian rule rather seeing it weaken. Determining the continuity and age of independent democracies depends on the criteria applied, but generally the United States is identified as the oldest democracy, while the country with longest history of universal suffrage is New Zealand. Contemporary innovations Under the influence of the theory of deliberative democracy, there have been several experiments where citizens and their representatives assemble to exchange reasons. The use of random selection to form a representative deliberative body is most commonly known as citizens' assembly. Citizens' assemblies have been used in Canada (2004, 2006) and the Netherlands (2006) to debate electoral reform, and in Iceland (2009 and 2010) for broader constitutional change. Notes References Citations General sources Primary sources Print sources Journals Further reading Kaplan, Temma. Democracy: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2014) External links Democracy by Our World in Data Democracy Democracy Types of democracy Democracy by location

Democracy indices

Democracy indices are quantitative and comparative assessments of the state of democracy for different countries according to various definitions of democracy. The democracies indices differ in whether they are categorical, such as classifying countries into democracies, hybrid regimes, and autocracies, or continuous values. The qualitative nature of democracy indices enables data analytical approaches for studying causal mechanisms of regime transformation processes. Democracy indices differ in scope and weighting of different aspects of democracy, including the breadth of core democratic institutions, competitiveness and inclusiveness of polyarchy, freedom of expression, various aspects of governance, democratic norm transgressions, co-option of opposition, electoral system manipulation, electoral fraud, and popular support of anti-democratic alternatives. Prominent democracy indices Operating The Economist Democracy Index, by the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit, is an assessment of countries' democracy. Countries are rated as full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, or authoritarian regimes. The index is based on five different categories measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture. V-Dem Democracy indices by V-Dem Institute distinguishes between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and quantifies these principles. The V-Dem Democracy indices include the Citizen-initiated component of direct popular vote index, which indicates the strength of direct democracy and the presidentialism index, which indicates higher concentration of political power in the hands of one individual. Bertelsmann Transformation Index by the Bertelsmann Stiftung evaluates the development status and governance of political and economic transformation processes on the path to constitutional democracy and a market economy for developing and transition countries around the world. Bertelsmann Transformation Index categorizes countries into: hard-line autocracy, moderate autocracy, very defective democracy, defective democracy, consolidating democracy. The Global State of Democracy Indices by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance assesses democratic performance using different types of sources: expert surveys, standards-based coding by research groups and analysts, observational data and composite measures. The Democracy Perception Index, published annually by the Alliance of Democracies, is the world's largest annual survey on how people perceive the state of democracy (cf. the Corruption Perceptions Index which similarly seeks to measure public perception). Indices measuring aspects of democracy Freedom in the World, is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House that measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territories around the world. Effective number of parties is an index of the adjusted number of political parties in a country's party system. Electoral Integrity Project surveys academics on the perceived electoral integrity of countries and subnational entities Fragile States Index, formerly the Failed States Index, is an annual report that aims to assess states' vulnerability to conflict or collapse, ranking all sovereign states with membership in the United Nations where there is enough data available for analysis. Gallagher index measures an electoral system's relative disproportionality between votes received and seats in a legislature. The Pedersen index is a measure of political volatility in party systems. Other measured aspects of democracy include voter turnout, efficiency gap, wasted vote, and political efficacy. Historical Democracy-Dictatorship Index is a binary measure of democracy and dictatorship. Democracy Ranking is a democracy ranking by the Association for Development and Advancement of the Democracy Award. Polity data series contains annual information on regime authority characteristics and covers the years 1800–2018 based on competitiveness, openness, and level of participation, sponsored by the Political Instability Task Force (PITF). Boix-Miller-Rosato dichotomous coding of democracy, easy-to-observe characteristics, few evaluations by own researchers based on academic literature. As a classification: non-democracy to democracy. Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED) by Skaaning et al. democracy's characteristics assessed with easy-to-observe characteristics, few evaluations by own researchers based on academic research. Then evaluating whether necessary characteristics are present or not. The Index of Democratization created by Tatu Vanhanen Maps of indices Difficulties in measuring democracy Because democracy is an overarching concept that includes the functioning of diverse institutions which are not easy to measure, limitations exist in quantifying and econometrically measuring the potential effects of democracy or its relationship with other phenomena—whether inequality, poverty, education etc. Given the constraints in acquiring reliable data with within-country variations on aspects of democracy, academics have largely studied cross-country variations, yet variations in democratic institutions can be large within countries. Another way of conceiving the difficulties in measuring democracy is through the debate between minimalist versus maximalist definitions of democracy. A minimalist conception of democracy defines democracy by primarily considering the essence of democracy; such as electoral procedures. A maximalist definition of democracy can include outcomes, such as economic or administrative efficiency, into measures of democracy. Some aspects of democracy, such as responsiveness or accountability, are generally not included in democracy indices due to the difficulty measuring these aspects. Other aspects, such as judicial independence or quality of the electoral system, are included in some democracy indices but not in others. Some measures of democracy, notably Freedom House and Polity IV, deploy a maximalist understanding of democracy by analyzing indicators that go beyond electoral procedure. These measures attempt to gauge contestation and inclusion; two features Robert Dahl argued are essential in democracies that successfully promote accountable governments. The democratic rating given by these mainstream measures can vary greatly depending on the indicators and evidence they deploy. The definition of democracy utilized by these measures is important because of the discouraging and alienating power such ratings can have, particularly when determined by indicators which are biased toward Western democracies. Dieter Fuchs and Edeltraud Roller suggest that, in order to truly measure the quality of democracy, objective measurements need to be complemented by "subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens". Similarly, Quinton Mayne and Brigitte Geißel also defend that the quality of democracy does not depend exclusively on the performance of institutions, but also on the citizens' own dispositions and commitment. Critiques of measures of democracy Data on democracy, and particularly global indices of democracy, have been scrutinized and criticized by various scholars. Gerardo L. Munck and Jay Verkuilen questioned various aspects of the data produced by Freedom House and Polity, such as the concept of democracy they measured, the design of indicators, and the aggregation rule. Political scientists Andrew T. Little and Anne Meng "highlight measurement concerns regarding time-varying bias in expert-coded data" such as Freedom House and V-Dem and encourage improving expert-coding practices. Knutsen et al. did not see evidence for time-varying bias in their expert-coded data and note the application of item response theory, factor analysis and estimates of uncertainties to limit expert biases while discussing concerns in operationalization of observer-invariant measures of democracy. See also Corruption Perception Index Democratic transition Types of democracy List of international rankings List of freedom indices List of globalization-related indices List of countries by system of government List of forms of government References Further reading External links Democracy data: how do researchers measure democracy? - Our World in Data How do you measure ‘democracy’? - The Washington Post Catalogue of Indices 2016 - Global Observatory International rankings Democracy Social science indices Types of democracy

Advocacy

Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group that aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to influence public policy, laws and budgets by using facts, their relationships, the media, and messaging to educate government officials and the public. Advocacy can include many activities that a person or organization undertakes, including media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research. Lobbying (often by lobby groups) is a form of advocacy where a direct approach is made to legislators on a specific issue or specific piece of legislation. Research has started to address how advocacy groups in the United States and Canada are using social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action. Forms There are several forms of advocacy, each representing a different approach in a way to initiate changes in the society. One of the most popular forms is social justice advocacy. Cohen, de la Vega, and Watson (2001) state that this definition does not encompass the notions of power relations, people's participation, and a vision of a just society as promoted by social justice advocates. For them, advocacy represents the series of actions taken and issues highlighted to change the "what is" into a "what should be", considering that this "what should be" is a more decent and a more just society Those actions, which vary with the political, economic and social environment in which they are conducted, have several points in common. For instance, they: Question the way policy is administered Participate in the agenda-setting as they raise significant issues Target political systems "because those systems are not responding to people's needs" Are inclusive and engaging Propose policy solutions Open up space for public argumentation Other forms of advocacy include: Budget advocacy: another aspect of advocacy that ensures proactive engagement of Civil Society Organizations with the government budget to make the government more accountable to the people and promote transparency. Budget advocacy also enables citizens and social action groups to compel the government to be more alert to the needs and aspirations of people in general and the deprived sections of the community. Bureaucratic advocacy: people considered "experts" have more chance to succeed at presenting their issues to decision-makers. They use bureaucratic advocacy to influence the agenda, although at a slower pace. Express versus issue advocacy: These two types of advocacy when grouped together usually refers to a debate in the United States whether a group is expressly making their desire known that voters should cast ballots in a particular way, or whether a group has a long-term issue that isn't campaign and election season specific. Health, environment and climate change negotiations advocacy: supports and promotes patients' health care rights as well as enhance community health and policy initiatives that focus on the availability, safety and quality of care. Ideological advocacy: in this approach, groups fight, sometimes during protests, to advance their ideas in the decision-making circles. Interest-group advocacy: lobbying is the main tool used by interest groups doing mass advocacy. It is a form of action that does not always succeed at influencing political decision-makers as it requires resources and organization to be effective. Legislative advocacy: the "reliance on the state or federal legislative process" as part of a strategy to create change. Mass advocacy: any type of action taken by large groups (petitions, demonstrations, etc.) Media advocacy: "the strategic use of the mass media as a resource to advance a social or public policy initiative" (Jernigan and Wright, 1996). In Canada, for example, the Manitoba Public Insurance campaigns illustrate how media advocacy was used to fight alcohol and tobacco-related health issues. We can also consider the role of health advocacy and the media in "the enactment of municipal smoking bylaws in Canada between 1970 and 1995." Special education advocacy: advocacy with a "specific focus on the educational rights of students with disabilities." Different contexts in which advocacy is used: In a legal/law context: An "advocate" is the title of a specific person who is authorized/appointed in some way to speak on behalf of a person in a legal process. In a political context: An "advocacy group" is an organized collection of people who seek to influence political decisions and policy, without seeking election to public office. In a social care context: Both terms (and more specific ones such as "independent advocacy") are used in the UK in the context of a network of interconnected organisations and projects which seek to benefit people who are in difficulty (primarily in the context of disability and mental health). In the context of inclusion: Citizen Advocacy organisations (or programmes) seek to cause benefit by reconnecting people who have become isolated. Their practice was defined in two key documents: CAPE, and Learning from Citizen Advocacy Programs. Tactics Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have observed four types of advocacy tactics: Information politics: quickly and credibly generating politically usable information and moving it to where it will have the most impact. Symbolic politics: calling upon symbols, actions, or stories that make sense of a situation for an audience that is frequently far away. Leverage politics: calling upon powerful actors to affect a situation where weaker members of a network are unlikely to have influence. Accountability politics: efforts to hold powerful actors to their previously stated policies or principles. These tactics have been also observed within advocacy organizations outside the USA. Use of the Internet Groups involved in advocacy work have been using the Internet to accomplish organizational goals. It has been argued that the Internet helps to increase the speed, reach and effectiveness of advocacy-related communication as well as mobilization efforts, suggesting that social media are beneficial to the advocacy community. Other examples Advocacy activities may include conducting an exit poll or the filing of an amicus brief. Topics People advocate for a large number and variety of topics. Some of these are clear-cut social issues that are universally agreed to be problematic and worth solving, such as human trafficking. Others—such as abortion—are much more divisive and inspire strongly held opinions on both sides. There may never be a consensus on this latter type of issues, but intense advocacy is likely to remain. In the United States, any issue of widespread debate and deeply divided opinion can be referred to as a social issue. The Library of Congress has assembled an extensive list of social issues in the United States, ranging from vast ones like abortion to same-sex marriage to smaller ones like hacking and academic cheating. Topics that appear to involve advancing a certain positive ideal are often known as causes. A particular cause may be very expansive in nature — for instance, increasing liberty or fixing a broken political system. For instance in 2008, U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama utilized such a meaning when he said, "this was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long; when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause." Change.org and Causes are two popular websites that allow people to organize around a common cause. Topics upon which there is universal agreement that they need to be solved include, for example, human trafficking, poverty, water and sanitation as a human right. "Social issues" as referred to in the United States also include topics (also known as "causes") intended by their advocates to advance certain ideals (such as equality) include: civil rights, LGBT rights, women's rights, environmentalism, and veganism. Transnational advocacy Advocates and advocacy groups represent a wide range of categories and support several issues as listed on worldadvocacy.com. The Advocacy Institute, a US-based global organization, is dedicated to strengthening the capacity of political, social, and economic justice advocates to influence and change public policy. The phenomenon of globalization draws a special attention to advocacy beyond countries’ borders. The core existence of networks such as World Advocacy or the Advocacy Institute demonstrates the increasing importance of transnational advocacy and international advocacy. Transnational advocacy networks are more likely to emerge around issues where external influence is necessary to ease the communication between internal groups and their own government. Groups of advocates willing to further their mission also tend to promote networks and to meet with their internal counterparts to exchange ideas. Transnational advocacy is increasingly playing a role in advocacy for migrants rights, and migrant advocacy organizations have strategically called upon governments and international organizations for leverage. Transnational advocates spend time with local interest groups in order to better understand their views and wishes. See also Advocacy group Cause lawyer Disability advocacy Patient advocacy References External links College Board Advocacy & Policy Center Public Affairs World – news and information site on the subject of lobbying Activism by type

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist and democratic approach towards achieving socialism. In modern practice, social democracy has become mainly capitalist, with the state regulating the economy in the form of welfare capitalism, economic interventionism, partial public ownership, a robust welfare state, policies promoting social equality, and a more equitable distribution of income. Social democracy maintains a commitment to representative and participatory democracy. Common aims include curbing inequality, eliminating the oppression of underprivileged groups, eradicating poverty, and upholding universally accessible public services such as child care, education, elderly care, health care, and workers' compensation. Economically, it supports income redistribution and regulating the economy in the public interest. Social democracy has a strong, long-standing connection with trade unions and the broader labour movement. It is supportive of measures to foster greater democratic decision-making in the economic sphere, including co-determination, collective bargaining rights for workers, and expanding ownership to employees and other stakeholders. The history of social democracy stretches back to the 19th-century labour movement. Originally a catch-all term for socialists of varying tendencies, after the Russian Revolution, it came to refer to reformist socialists that are opposed to the authoritarian and centralized Soviet model of socialism. In the post-war era, social democrats embraced mixed economies with a predominance of private property and promoted the regulation of capitalism over its replacement with a qualitatively different socialist economic system. Since then, social democracy has been associated with Keynesian economics, the Nordic model, and welfare states. Social democracy has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism. Amongst social democrats, attitudes towards socialism vary: some retain socialism as a long-term goal, with social democracy being a political and economic democracy supporting a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach towards achieving socialism. Others view it as an ethical ideal to guide reforms within capitalism. One way social democracy can be distinguished from democratic socialism is that social democracy aims to strike a balance by advocating for a mixed market economy where capitalism is regulated to address inequalities through social welfare programs and supports private ownership with a strong emphasis on a well-regulated market. In contrast, democratic socialism places greater emphasis on abolishing private property ownership. Nevertheless, the distinction remains blurred and the two terms are commonly used synonymously. The Third Way is an off-shoot of social democracy which aims to fuse economically liberal with social democratic economic policies and center-left social policies. It is a reconceptualization of social democracy developed in the 1990s and embraced by some social democratic parties; some analysts have characterized the Third Way as part of the neoliberal movement. Definitions As a tradition of socialism Social democracy is defined as one of many socialist traditions. As an international political movement and ideology, it aims to achieve socialism through gradual and democratic means. This definition goes back to the influence of both the reformist socialism of Ferdinand Lassalle and the internationalist revolutionary socialism advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Social democracy has undergone various major forms throughout its history. In the 19th century, it encompassed various non-revolutionary and revolutionary currents of socialism, excluding anarchism. In one of the first scholarly works on European socialism written for an American audience, Richard T. Ely's 1883 book French and German Socialism in Modern Times, social democrats were characterized as "the extreme wing of the socialists" who were "inclined to lay so much stress on equality of enjoyment, regardless of the value of one's labor, that they might, perhaps, more properly be called communists". In the early 20th century, social democracy came to refer to support for a process of developing society through existing political structures and opposition to revolutionary means, which are often associated with Marxism. Thus whereas in the 19th century, social democracy could be described as "organized Marxism", it became "organized reformism" by the 20th century. In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are sometimes seen as synonyms, while they are distinguished in journalistic use. Under this democratic socialist definition, social democracy is an ideology seeking to gradually build an alternative socialist economy through the institutions of liberal democracy. Starting in the post-war period, social democracy was defined as a policy regime advocating the reformation of capitalism to align it with the ethical ideals of social justice. What socialists such as anarchists, communists, social democrats, syndicalists, and some social democratic proponents of the Third Way share in common is history, specifically that they can all be traced back to the individuals, groups, and literature of the First International, and have retained some of the terminology and symbolism such as the colour red. How far society should intervene and whether the government, mainly the existing government, is the right vehicle for change are issues of disagreement. As the Historical Dictionary of Socialism summarizes, "there were general criticisms about the social effects of the private ownership and control of capital", "a general view that the solution to these problems lay in some form of collective control (with the degree of control varying among the proponents of socialism) over the means of production, distribution, and exchange", and "there was agreement that the outcomes of this collective control should be a society that provided social equality and justice, economic protection, and generally a more satisfying life for most people". Socialism became a catch-all term for the critics of capitalism and industrial society. Social democrats are anticapitalists insofar as criticism about "poverty, low wages, unemployment, economic and social inequality, and a lack of economic security" is linked to the private ownership of the means of production. Social democracy or social democratic remains controversial among socialists. Some define it as representing a Marxist faction and non-communist socialists or the right-wing of socialism during the split with communism. Others have noted its pejorative use among communists and other socialists. According to Lyman Tower Sargent, "socialism refers to social theories rather than to theories oriented to the individual. Because many communists now call themselves democratic socialists, it is sometimes difficult to know what a political label really means. As a result, social democratic has become a common new label for democratic socialist political parties." As a policy regime As a policy regime, social democracy entails support for a mixed economy and ameliorative measures to benefit the working class within the framework of democratic capitalism. Social democracy currently depicts a chiefly capitalist economy with state economic regulation in the general interest, state provision of welfare services and state redistribution of income and wealth. Social democratic concepts influence the policies of most Western states since World War 2. Social democracy is frequently considered a practical middle course between capitalism and socialism. Social democracy aims to use democratic collective action for promoting freedom and equality in the economy and opposes what is seen as inequality and oppression that laissez-faire capitalism causes. In the 21st century, it has become commonplace to define social democracy in reference to Northern and Western European countries, and their model of a welfare state with a corporatist system of collective bargaining. Social democracy has also been used synonymously with the Nordic model. Henning Meyer and Jonathan Rutherford associate social democracy with the socioeconomic order in Europe from the post-war period until the early 1990s. Social democratic roots are also observed in Latin America during the early 20th century; this was the case in Uruguay during the two presidential terms of José Batlle y Ordóñez. While the welfare state has been accepted across the political spectrum, particularly by conservatives (Christian democrats) and liberals (social liberals), one notable difference is that socialists see the welfare state "not merely to provide benefits but to build the foundation for emancipation and self-determination". In the 21st century, a social democratic policy regime may further be distinguished by a support for an increase in welfare policies or an increase in public services. Some distinguish between ideological social democracy as part of the broad socialist movement and social democracy as a policy regime. They call the first classical social democracy or classical socialism, and the latter as competitive socialism, liberal socialism, neo-social democracy, or new social democracy. As a name for political parties Many socialist parties in several countries have been, or are called Social Democratic. In the 19th century, social democrat was a broad catch-all for international socialists owing their primary ideological allegiance to Lassalle or Marx, in contrast to those advocating various forms of utopian socialism. Many parties in this era described themselves as Social Democrats, including the General German Workers' Association and the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany, which merged to form the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Social Democratic Federation in Britain, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Social Democrat continued to be used in this context until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, when Communist came into vogue for individuals and organizations espousing a revolutionary road to socialism. In the 20th century, the term came to be associated with the positions of the German and Swedish parties. The first advocated revisionist Marxism, while the second advocated a comprehensive welfare state. By the 21st century, parties advocating social democracy include Labour, Left, and some Green parties. Most social democratic parties consider themselves democratic socialists and are categorized as socialists. They continue to reference socialism, either as a post-capitalist order or, in more ethical terms, as a just society, described as representing democratic socialism, without any explicit reference to the economic system or its structure. Parties such as the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Swedish Social Democratic Party describe their goal as developing democratic socialism, with social democracy as the principle of action. In the 21st century, European social democratic parties represent the centre-left and most are part of the Party of European Socialists, while democratic socialist parties are to their left within the Party of the European Left. Many of those social democratic parties are members of the Socialist International, including several democratic socialist parties, whose Frankfurt Declaration declares the goal of developing democratic socialism. Others are also part of the Progressive Alliance, founded in 2013 by most contemporary or former member parties of the Socialist International. As Marxist revisionism Social democracy has been seen as a revision of orthodox Marxism, although this has been described as misleading for modern social democracy. Marxist revisionist Eduard Bernstein's views influenced and laid the groundwork for developing post-war social democracy as a policy regime, Labour revisionism, and the neo-revisionism of the Third Way. This definition of social democracy is focused on ethical terms, with the type of socialism advocated being ethical and liberal. Bernstein described socialism and social democracy in particular as organized liberalism; in this sense, liberalism is the predecessor and precursor of socialism, whose restricted view of freedom is to be socialized, while democracy must entail social democracy. For those social democrats, who still describe and see themselves as socialists, socialism is used in ethical or moral terms, representing democracy, egalitarianism, and social justice rather than a specifically socialist economic system. Under this type of definition, social democracy's goal is that of advancing those values within a capitalist market economy, as its support for a mixed economy no longer denotes the coexistence between private and public ownership or that between planning and market mechanisms but rather, it represents free markets combined with government intervention and regulations. Philosophy As a form of reformist democratic socialism, social democracy rejects the either/or interpretation of capitalism versus socialism. It claims that fostering a progressive evolution of capitalism will gradually result in the evolution of a capitalist economy into a socialist economy. All citizens should be legally entitled to certain social rights: universal access to public services such as education, health care, workers' compensation, and other services, including child care and care for the elderly. Social democrats advocate freedom from discrimination based on differences in ability/disability, age, ethnicity, gender, language, race, religion, sexual orientation, and social class. Later in their lives, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that in some countries, workers might be able to achieve their aims through peaceful means. In this sense, Engels argued that socialists were evolutionists, although both Marx and Engels remained committed to social revolution. In developing social democracy, Eduard Bernstein rejected orthodox Marxism's revolutionary and materialist foundations. Rather than class conflict and socialist revolution, Bernstein's Marxist revisionism reflected that socialism could be achieved through cooperation between people regardless of class. Nonetheless, Bernstein paid deference to Marx, describing him as the father of social democracy but declaring that it was necessary to revise Marx's thought in light of changing conditions. Influenced by the gradualist platform favoured by the Fabian movement in Britain, Bernstein advocated a similar evolutionary approach to socialist politics that he termed evolutionary socialism. Evolutionary means include representative democracy and cooperation between people regardless of class. Bernstein accepted the Marxist analysis that the creation of socialism is interconnected with the evolution of capitalism. August Bebel, Bernstein, Engels, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Marx, and Carl Wilhelm Tölcke are all considered founders of social democracy in Germany. However, Bernstein and Lassalle, along with labourists and reformists such as Louis Blanc in France, led to the widespread association of social democracy with socialist reformism. While Lassalle was a reformist state socialist, Bernstein predicted a long-term coexistence of democracy with a mixed economy during the reforming of capitalism into socialism and argued that socialists needed to accept this. This mixed economy would involve public, cooperative, and private enterprises, and it would be necessary for an extended period before private enterprises evolve of their own accord into cooperative enterprises. Bernstein supported state ownership only for certain parts of the economy that the state could best manage and rejected a mass scale of state ownership as being too burdensome to be manageable. Bernstein was an advocate of Kantian socialism and neo-Kantianism. Although unpopular early on, his views became mainstream after World War I. In The Future of Socialism (1956), Anthony Crosland argued that "traditional capitalism has been reformed and modified almost out of existence, and it is with a quite different form of society that socialists must now concern themselves. Pre-war anti-capitalism will give us very little help", for a new kind of capitalism required a new kind of socialism. Crosland believed that these features of reformed managerial capitalism were irreversible, but it has been argued within the Labour Party and by others that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought about its reversal in the 1970s and 1980s. Although the post-war consensus represented a period where social democracy was "most buoyant", it has been argued that "post-war social democracy had been altogether too confident in its analysis" because "gains which were thought to be permanent turned out to be conditional and as the reservoir of capitalist growth showed signs of drying up". In Socialism Now (1974), Crosland argued that "[m]uch more should have been achieved by a Labour Government in office and Labour pressure in opposition. Against the dogged resistance to change, we should have pitted a stronger will to change. I conclude that a move to the Left is needed". In Origin, Ideology and Transformation of Political Parties: East-Central and Western Europe Compared, Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopecek explain how socialist parties have evolved from the 19th to the early 21st centuries. As the number of people in traditional working-class occupations such as factory workers and miners declined, socialists have successfully widened their appeal to the middle class by diluting their ideology; however, there is still continuity between parties such as the SPD, the Labour Party in Britain, and other socialist parties which remain part of the same famille spirituelle, or ideological party family, as outlined by most political scientists. For many social democrats, Marxism is loosely held to be valuable for its emphasis on changing the world for a more just, better future. History During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, social democracy was a broad labour movement within socialism that aimed to replace private ownership with social ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, taking influence from both Marxism and the supporters of Ferdinand Lassalle. By 1868–1869, the socialism associated with Karl Marx had become the official theoretical basis of the first social democratic party established in Europe, the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany. In the early 20th century, the German social democratic politician Eduard Bernstein rejected orthodox Marxist ideas about the inevitable progression of history and the need for revolution, advancing instead the position that socialism should be grounded in ethical and moral arguments and achieved through gradual legislative reform. Bernstein's ideas were initially not well received; his party maintained the position that reforms should be pursued only as a means to an eventual revolution, not as a substitute for it. Yet, Bernstein's ideas would have growing influence, particularly after the First World War. The Russian Revolution was a pivotal moment that furthered the division between reformists and revolutionary socialists. Those supporting the October Revolution renamed themselves as Communists while those opposing the Bolsheviks retained the Social Democrat label. While both groups technically shared the goal of a communist society that fully realized the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", the Communists sought to distance themselves from to Social Democracy's association with reformism. The Communists also sought to distinguish themselves from the socialists that had supported the imperialist Great War and thus betrayed proletarian internationalism. This reformist–revolutionary division culminated in the German Revolution of 1919, in which the Communists wanted to overthrow the German government and establish a soviet republic like Russia, while the Social Democrats wanted to preserve it as what came to be known as the Weimar Republic. Thus social democracy went from a "Marxist revolutionary" doctrine into a form of "moderate parliamentary socialism". The Bolsheviks split from the Second International and created their own separate Communist International (Comintern) in 1919 that sought to rally revolutionary social democrats together for socialist revolution. With this split, the reformists founded the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in 1923. The LSI had a history of rivalry with the Comintern, with which it competed over the leadership of the international socialist and labour movement. During the 1920s and 1930s, social democracy became dominant in the socialist movement, mainly associated with reformist socialism while communism represented revolutionary socialism. Under the influence of politicians like Carlo Rosselli in Italy, social democrats began disassociating themselves from orthodox Marxism altogether as represented by Marxism–Leninism, embracing liberal socialism, Keynesianism, and appealing to morality rather than any consistent systematic, scientific, or materialist worldview. Social democracy appealed to communitarian, corporatist, and sometimes nationalist sentiments while rejecting the economic and technological determinism generally characteristic of orthodox Marxism and economic liberalism. By the post-World War II period and its economic consensus and expansion, most social democrats in Europe had abandoned their ideological connection to orthodox Marxism. They shifted their emphasis toward social policy reform as a compromise between capitalism to socialism. According to Michael Harrington, the primary reason for this was the perspective that viewed the Stalinist-era Soviet Union as having succeeded in usurping the legacy of Marxism and distorting it in propaganda to justify totalitarianism. In its foundation, the Socialist International denounced the Bolshevik-inspired communist movement, "for [it] falsely claims a share in the Socialist tradition". Furthermore, core tenets of Marxism have been regarded by social democrats as having become obsolete, including the prediction that the working class was the decisive class with the development of capitalism. In their view, this did not materialize in the aftermath of mass industrialization during World War II. In Britain, the social democratic Gaitskellites emphasized the goals of personal liberty, social welfare, and social equality. The Gaitskellites were part of a political consensus between the Labour and Conservative parties, famously dubbed Butskellism. Some social democratic Third Way figures such as Anthony Giddens and Tony Blair, who has described himself as a Christian socialist and a socialist in ethical terms, insist that they are socialists, for they claim to believe in the same values that their anti-Third Way critics do. According to those self-proclaimed social democratic modernizers, Clause IV's open advocacy of state socialism was alienating potential middle-class Labour supporters, and nationalization policies had been so thoroughly attacked by neoliberal economists and politicians, including rhetorical comparisons by the right of state-owned industry in the West to that in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, and nationalizations and state socialism became unpopular. Thatcherite Conservatives were adept at condemning state-owned enterprises as economically inefficient. For the Gaitskellites, nationalization was not essential to achieve all major socialist objectives; public ownership and nationalization were not explicitly rejected but were seen as merely one of numerous useful devices. According to social democratic modernizers like Blair, nationalization policies had become politically unviable by the 1990s. During the Third Way development of social democracy, social democrats adjusted to the neoliberal political climate that had existed since the 1980s. Those social democrats recognized that outspoken opposition to capitalism was politically non-viable and that accepting the powers that be, seeking to challenge free-market and laissez-faire variations of capitalism, was a more immediate concern. The Third Way stands for a modernized social democracy, but the social democracy that remained committed to the gradual abolition of capitalism and social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism. Although social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement, one distinction between democratic socialism and social democracy is that the former can include revolutionary means. The latter proposes representative democracy under the rule of law as the only acceptable constitutional form of government. During the Great Recession, Social Democratic parties in Europe increasingly adopted austerity as a policy response to the economic crisis, shifting away from the traditional Keynesian response of deficit spending. According to Björn Bremer, this shift in thinking was due to the influence of supply-side economics on Social Democratic leaders and by electoral motivations whereby Social Democrats wanted to appear economically competent to voters by adopting orthodox fiscal policies. Social democracy and democratic socialism Social democracy has some significant overlap in practical policy positions with democratic socialism, although they are usually distinguished from each other. In Britain, the revised version of Clause IV to the Labour Party Constitution, which was implemented in the 1990s by the New Labour faction led by Tony Blair, affirms a formal commitment to democratic socialism, describing it as a modernized form of social democracy; however, it no longer commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services either owned by the public or accountable to them". Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists", and some such as Blair "use or have used these terms interchangeably". Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term 'social democracy' only". Democratic socialism represents social democracy before the 1970s, when the post-war displacement of Keynesianism by monetarism and neoliberalism caused many social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the status quo for the time being and redefining socialism in a way that maintains the capitalist structure intact. Like modern social democracy, democratic socialism tends to follow a gradual or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one. Policies commonly supported are Keynesian and include some degree of regulation over the economy, social insurance schemes, public pension programs, and a gradual expansion of public ownership over major and strategic industries. Internal debates During the late 20th century, those labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the emergence of developments within the European left, such as Eurocommunism, the rise of neoliberalism, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Revolutions of 1989, the Third Way, and the rise of anti-austerity and Occupy movements due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the causes of which have been attributed by some to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies. This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians, such as Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who rejected centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties. According to both right-wing critics and supporters alike, policies such as universal health care and education are "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society". Because of this overlap, democratic socialism refers to European socialism as represented by social democracy, especially in the United States, where it is tied to the New Deal. Some democratic socialists who follow social democracy support practical, progressive reforms of capitalism and are more concerned with administrating and humanising it, with socialism relegated to the indefinite future. Other democratic socialists want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate the systematic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism. In the United States Despite the long history of overlap between the two, with social democracy considered a form of democratic or parliamentary socialism and social democrats calling themselves democratic socialists, democratic socialism is considered a misnomer in the United States. One issue is that social democracy is equated with wealthy countries in the Western world, especially in Northern and Western Europe, while democratic socialism is conflated either with the pink tide in Latin America, especially with Venezuela, or with communism in the form of Marxist–Leninist socialism as practised in the Soviet Union and other self-declared socialist states. Democratic socialism has been described as representing the left-wing or socialist tradition of the New Deal. The lack of a strong and influential socialist movement in the United States has been linked to the Red Scare, and any ideology associated with socialism brings social stigma due to its association with authoritarian socialist states. Socialism has been used as a pejorative term by members of the political right to stop the implementation of liberal and progressive policies and proposals and to criticize the public figures trying to implement them. Although Americans may reject the idea that the United States has characteristics of a European-style social democracy, it has been argued by some observers that it has a comfortable social safety net, albeit severely underfunded in comparison to other Western countries. It has also been argued that many policies that may be considered socialist are popular but that socialism is not. Others, such as Tony Judt, described modern liberalism in the United States as representing European social democracy. In South Africa South Africa has been governed by the African National Congress (ANC), a social democratic party, since 1994. In 2022, The World Economic Forum said that South Africa risks state collapse and identified five major risks facing the country. Former minister Jay Naidoo has said that South Africa is in serious trouble and is showing signs of a failed state, with record unemployment levels and the fact that many young people will not find a job in their lifetime. Policy regime Social democracy rests on three fundamental features, namely: "(1) parliamentary democracy, (2) an economy partly regulated by the state, and (3) provision of social support to those in need". In practice, social democratic parties have been instrumental in the social-liberal paradigm, lasting from the 1940s and 1970s, and called such because it was developed by social liberals but implemented by social democrats. Since those policies were mostly implemented by social democrats, social liberalism is sometimes called social democracy. In Britain, the social-liberal Beveridge Report drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge influenced the Labour Party's social policies, such as the National Health Service and Labour's welfare state development. This social-liberal paradigm represented the post-war consensus and was accepted across the political spectrum by conservatives, liberals and socialists until the 1970s. Similarly, the neoliberal paradigm, which replaced the previous paradigm, was accepted across the mainstream political parties, including social democratic supporters of the Third Way. This has caused much controversy within the social democratic movement. Role of the state From the late 19th century until the mid to late 20th century, there was greater public confidence in the idea of a state-managed economy that was a major pillar of communism, and to a substantial degree by conservatives and left-liberals. Aside from anarchists and other libertarian socialists, there was confidence amongst socialists in the concept of state socialism as being the most effective form of socialism. Some early British social democrats in the 19th century and 20th century, such as the Fabians, said that British society was already mostly socialist and that the economy was significantly socialist through government-run enterprises created by conservative and liberal governments which could be run for the interests of the people through their representatives' influence, an argument echoed by some socialists in post-war Britain. Advents in economics and observation of the failure of state socialism in the Eastern Bloc countries and the Western world with the crisis and stagflation of the 1970s, combined with the neoliberal rebuke of state interventionism, resulted in socialists re-evaluating and redesigning socialism. Some social democrats have sought to keep what they deem are socialism's core values while changing their position on state involvement in the economy and retaining significant social regulations. When nationalization of large industries was relatively widespread in the 20th century until the 1970s, it was not uncommon for commentators to describe some European social democracies as democratic socialist states seeking to move their countries toward a socialist economy. In 1956, leading Labour Party politician and British author Anthony Crosland said that capitalism had been abolished in Britain, although others such as Welshman Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the first post-war Labour government and the architect of the National Health Service, disputed the claim. For Crosland and others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist state. According to Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health Service, which opposed the hedonism of Britain's capitalist society. Although, as in the rest of Europe, the laws of capitalism still operated fully and private enterprise dominated the economy, some political commentators stated that during the post-war period, when social democratic parties were in power, countries such as Britain and France were democratic socialist states. The same claim has been applied to Nordic countries with the Nordic model. In the 1980s, the government of President François Mitterrand aimed to expand dirigism and attempted to nationalize all French banks, but this attempt faced opposition from the European Economic Community because it demanded a free-market economy among its members. Public ownership never accounted for more than 15–20% of capital formation, further dropping to 8% in the 1980s and below 5% in the 1990s after the rise of neoliberalism. The collapse of the legitimacy of state socialism and Keynesian interventionism (with the discovery of the phenomenon of stagflation) has been an issue for social democracy. This has provoked re-thinking of how socialism should be achieved by social democrats, including changing views by social democrats on private property—anti-Third Way social democrats such as Robert Corfe have advocated a socialist form of private property as part of new socialism (although Corfe technically objects to private property as a term to collectively describe property that is not publicly owned as being vague) and rejecting state socialism as a failure. Third Way social democracy was formed in response to what its proponents saw as a crisis in the legitimacy of socialism—especially state socialism—and the rising legitimacy of neoliberalism, especially laissez-faire capitalism. The Third Way's view of the crisis is criticized for being too simplistic. Others have criticized it because with the fall of state socialism, it was possible for "a new kind of 'third way' socialism (combining social ownership with markets and democracy), thereby heralding a revitalization of the social democratic tradition"; however, it has been argued that the prospect of a new socialism was "a chimera, a hopeful invention of Western socialists who had not understood how 'actually existing socialism' had totally discredited any version of socialism among those who had lived under it". Corporatism Social democracy influenced the development of social corporatism, a form of economic tripartite corporatism based upon a social partnership between the interests of capital and labour, involving collective bargaining between representatives of employers and labour mediated by the government at the national level. During the post-war consensus, this form of social democracy has been a major component of the Nordic model and, to a lesser degree, the West European social market economies. The development of social corporatism began in Norway and Sweden in the 1930s and was consolidated in the 1960s and 1970s. The system was based upon the dual compromise of capital and labour as one component and the market and the state as the other. From the 1940s through the 1970s, defining features of social democracy as a policy regime included Keynesian economic policies and industrial agreements to balance the power of capital and labour and the welfare state. This is especially associated with the Swedish Social Democrats. In the 1970s, social corporatism evolved into neo-corporatism, which replaced it. Neo-corporatism has represented an important concept of Third Way social democracy. Social democratic theorist Robin Archer wrote about the importance of social corporatism to social democracy in his work Economic Democracy: The Politics of a Feasible Socialism (1995). As a welfare state, social democracy is a specific type of welfare state and policy regime described as being universalist, supportive of collective bargaining, and more supportive of public provision of welfare. It is especially associated with the Nordic model. Analysis Legacy Social democratic policies were first adopted in the German Empire between the 1880s and 1890s, when the conservative Chancellor Otto von Bismarck put in place many social welfare proposals initially suggested by the Social Democrats to hinder their electoral success after he instituted the Anti-Socialist Laws, laying the ground of the first modern welfare state. Those policies were dubbed State Socialism by the liberal opposition, but Bismarck later accepted and re-appropriated the term. It was a set of social programs implemented in Germany that Bismarck initiated in 1883 as remedial measures to appease the working class and reduce support for socialism and the Social Democrats following earlier attempts to achieve the same objective through Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Laws. This did not prevent the Social Democrats from becoming the biggest party in parliament by 1912. Similar policies were later adopted in most of Western Europe, including France and the United Kingdom (the latter in the form of the Liberal welfare reforms), with both socialist and liberal parties adopting those policies. In the United States, the progressive movement, a similar social democratic movement predominantly influenced more by social liberalism than socialism, supported progressive liberals such as Democratic presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Freedom and New Deal programmes adopted many social democratic policies. With the Great Depression, economic interventionism and nationalizations became more common worldwide and the post-war consensus until the 1970s saw Keynesian social democratic and mixed economy policies put in place, leading to the post-World War II boom in which the United States, the Soviet Union, the Western European, and East Asian countries experienced unusually high and sustained economic growth, together with full employment. Contrary to early predictions, this period of high economic growth and national development also included many countries that were devastated by the war, such as Japan (Japanese post-war economic miracle), West Germany and Austria (Wirtschaftswunder), South Korea (Miracle of the Han River), France (Trente Glorieuses), Italy (Italian economic miracle), and Greece (Greek economic miracle). With the 1970s energy crisis, the abandonment of both the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system along with Keynesian social democratic, mixed-economy policies and the implementation of market-oriented, monetarist, and neoliberal policies (privatization, deregulation, free trade, economic globalization, and anti-inflationary fiscal policy, among others), the social democratic welfare state was put in doubt. This caused several social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way, a centrist ideology combining social democracy with neoliberalism; however, the Great Recession in the late 2000s and early 2010s cast doubts on the Washington Consensus, and protests against austerity measures ensued. There was a resurgence of social democratic parties and policies, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, with the rise of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who rejected the Third Way, after the economic recession caused the Pasokification of many social democratic parties. The United Nations World Happiness Report shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in social democratic nations, especially in Northern Europe, where the Nordic model is applied. This is at times attributed to the success of the social democratic Nordic model in the region, where similar democratic socialist, labourist, and social democratic parties dominated the region's political scene and laid the ground for their universal welfare states in the 20th century. The Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands, also ranks highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, economic equality, public health, life expectancy, solidarity, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity, quality of life, and human development, while countries practising a neoliberal form of government have registered relatively poorer results. Similarly, several reports have listed Scandinavian and other social democratic countries as ranking high on indicators such as civil liberties, democracy, press, labour and economic freedoms, peace, and freedom from corruption. Numerous studies and surveys indicate that people live happier lives in countries ruled by social democratic parties than those ruled by neoliberal, centrist, and right-wing governments. Criticism Other socialists criticize social democracy because it serves to devise new means to strengthen the capitalist system, which conflicts with the socialist goal of replacing capitalism with a socialist system. According to this view, social democracy fails to address the systemic issues inherent in capitalism. The American democratic socialist philosopher David Schweickart contrasts social democracy with democratic socialism by defining the former as an attempt to strengthen the welfare state and the latter as an alternative economic system to capitalism. According to Schweickart, the democratic socialist critique of social democracy is that capitalism can never be sufficiently humanized and that any attempt to suppress its economic contradictions will only cause them to emerge elsewhere. He gives the example that attempts to reduce unemployment too much would result in inflation, and too much job security would erode labour discipline. In contrast to social democracy's mixed economy, democratic socialists advocate a post-capitalist economic system based on either a market economy combined with workers' self-management or on some form of participatory, decentralized planning of the economy. Marxian socialists argue that social democratic welfare policies cannot resolve the fundamental structural issues of capitalism, such as cyclical fluctuations, exploitation, and alienation. Accordingly, social democratic programs intended to ameliorate living conditions in capitalism, such as unemployment benefits and taxation on profits, creates further contradictions by further limiting the efficiency of the capitalist system by reducing incentives for capitalists to invest in further production. The welfare state only serves to legitimize and prolong the exploitative and contradiction-laden system of capitalism to society's detriment. Critics of contemporary social democracy, such as Jonas Hinnfors, argue that when social democracy abandoned Marxism, it also abandoned socialism and became a liberal capitalist movement, effectively making social democrats similar to non-socialist parties like the Democratic Party in the United States. Market socialism is also critical of social democratic welfare states. While one common goal of both concepts is to achieve greater social and economic equality, market socialism does so through changes in enterprise ownership and management. Social democracy attempts to do so by subsidies and taxes on privately owned enterprises to finance welfare programs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt III (grandson of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt) and David Belkin criticize social democracy for maintaining a property-owning capitalist class with an active interest in reversing social democratic welfare policies and a disproportionate amount of power as a class to influence government policy. The economists John Roemer and Pranab Bardhan point out that social democracy requires a strong labour movement to sustain its heavy redistribution through taxes and that it is idealistic to think such redistribution can be accomplished in other countries with weaker labour movements, noting that social democracy in Scandinavian countries has been in decline as the labour movement weakened. Some critics say social democracy abandoned socialism in the 1930s by endorsing Keynesian welfare capitalism. The democratic socialist political theorist Michael Harrington argued that social democracy historically supported Keynesianism as part of a "social democratic compromise" between capitalism and socialism. Although this compromise did not allow for the immediate creation of socialism, it created welfare states and "recognized noncapitalist, and even anticapitalist, principles of human need over and above the imperatives of profit". Social democrats in favour of the Third Way have been accused of endorsing capitalism, including anti-Third Way social democrats who have accused Third Way proponents such as Anthony Giddens of being anti-social democratic and anti-socialist in practice. Some critics and analysts argue that many prominent social democratic parties, such as the Labour Party in Britain and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, even while maintaining references to socialism and declaring themselves democratic socialist parties, have abandoned socialism in practice, whether unwillingly or not. Social democracy's reformism has been criticized by both the left and right, on the grounds that if reformist socialists were left to govern a capitalist economy, they would have to do so according to capitalist, not socialist, logic. For example, Joseph Schumpeter writes in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942): "Socialists had to govern in an essentially capitalist world... a social and economic system that would not function except on capitalist lines.... If they were to run it, they would have to run it according to its own logic. They would have to 'administer' capitalism". Similarly, Irving Kristol argued: "Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered it". Joseph Stalin was a vocal critic of reformist social democrats, later coining the term social fascism to describe social democracy in the 1930s because, in this period, it embraced a similar corporatist economic model to the model supported by fascism. This view was adopted by the Communist International, which argued that capitalist society had entered the Third Period in which a proletarian revolution was imminent but could be prevented by social democrats and other fascist forces. See also Pasokification Economic progressivism History of the Social Democratic Party of Austria History of the Social Democratic Party of Germany International Group of Democratic Socialists List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation List of social democratic and democratic socialist parties that have governed List of democratic socialist parties and organizations List of democratic socialists List of Labour parties List of left-wing political parties List of social democratic parties List of social democrats Social Democratic Party Socialist Party Socialist Union of Central-Eastern Europe Three Arrows References Citations Notes Sources Books Conferences Encyclopedias Journals News Speeches Websites Further reading Häusermann, Silja; Kitschelt, Herbert, eds. (2024). Beyond Social Democracy: The Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies. Cambridge University Press. External links Anti-Stalinist left Anti-capitalism Anti-fascism Centre-left ideologies Centre-left politics Centrism Democracy Democratic socialism Economic ideologies Economic progressivism Left-wing ideologies Liberal socialism Market socialism Mixed economies Political ideologies Political philosophy Political-economic models Progressivism Social justice Democracy Socialism Types of democracy Types of socialism Welfare economics

Statism

In political science, statism or etatism (from French état 'state') is the doctrine that the political authority of the state is legitimate to some degree. This may include economic and social policy, especially in regard to taxation and the means of production. While in use since the 1850s, the term statism gained significant usage in American political discourse throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Opposition to statism is termed anti-statism or anarchism. The latter is usually characterized by a complete rejection of all hierarchical rulership. Overview Statism can take many forms, from small government to big government. Minarchism is a political philosophy that prefers a minimal state such as a night-watchman state to protect people from aggression, theft, breach of contract and fraud with the military, police and courts. This may also include fire departments, prisons and other functions. The welfare state is another form within the spectrum of statism. Authoritarian philosophies view a strong, authoritative state as required to legislate or enforce morality and cultural practices. Totalitarianism is that which prefers a maximum, all-encompassing state. Political theory has long questioned the nature and rights of the state. Some forms of corporatism extol the moral position that the corporate group, usually the state, is greater than the sum of its parts and that individuals have a moral obligation to serve the state. Skepticism towards statism in Western cultures is largely rooted in Enlightenment philosophy. John Locke notably influenced modern thinking in his writings published before and after the English Revolution of 1688, especially A Letter Concerning Toleration (1667), Two Treatises of Government (1689) and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). In the text of 1689, he established the basis of liberal political theory, i.e., that people's rights existed before government; that the purpose of government is to protect personal and property rights; that people may dissolve governments that do not do so; and that representative government is the best form to protect rights. Economic statism Economic statism promotes the view that the state has a major, necessary and legitimate role in directing the major aspects of the economy, either directly through state-owned enterprises and economic planning of production, or indirectly through economic interventionism and macro-economic regulation. State capitalism State capitalism is a form of capitalism that features high concentrations of state-owned commercial enterprises or state direction of an economy based on the accumulation of capital, wage labor and market allocation. In some cases, state capitalism refers to economic policies such as dirigisme, which existed in France during the second half of the 20th century and to the present-day economies of the People's Republic of China and Singapore, where the government owns controlling shares in publicly traded companies. Some authors also define the former economies of the Eastern Bloc and Soviet Union as constituting a form of state capitalism. State corporatism State corporatism, corporate statism or simply "corporatism" is a political culture and a form of corporatism whose proposers affirm or believe that corporate groups should form the basis of society and the state. This principle requires that all citizens belong to one of the various officially designated interest groups (usually on the basis of the economic sector), the state also has great control over its citizens. State interventionism The term statism is sometimes used to refer to market economies with large amounts of government intervention, regulation or influence over markets. Market economies that feature high degrees of intervention are sometimes referred to as "mixed economies". Economic interventionism asserts that the state has a legitimate or necessary role within the framework of a capitalist economy by intervening in markets, regulating against overreaches of private sector industry and either providing or subsidizing goods and services not adequately produced by the market. State socialism State socialism broadly refers to forms of socialism based on state ownership of the means of production and state-directed allocation of resources. It is often used in reference to Soviet-type economic systems of former communist states and, by extension, those of North Korea, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China. Critics of state socialism argue that its known manifestations in Soviet-model states are merely forms of state capitalism, claiming that the Soviet model of economics was based upon a process of state-directed capital accumulation and social hierarchy. Politically, state socialism is often used to designate any socialist political ideology or movement that advocates for the use of state power for the construction of socialism, or to the belief that the state must be appropriated and used to ensure the success of a socialist revolution. It is usually used in reference to Marxist–Leninist socialists who champion a one-party state. Political statism State nationalism State nationalism, state-based nationalism, or state-led nationalism is a nationalism that equates 'state identity' with 'nation identity' or values state authority. 'State nationalism' is considered a form of 'civic nationalism' and there are similarities between the two, but this also has to do with illiberal, authoritarian and totalitarian politics; Italian fascism is the best example, epitomized in this slogan of Benito Mussolini: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" ("Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State"). In the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, "state nationalism" and "statism" are both written as 國家主義, making the distinction between the two unclear. Also, in the East Asian cultural sphere, state nationalism is often contrasted with ethnic-based national liberation movements. Chinese state nationalism is a civic nationalistic ideology, but it is an ideology that reduces Hong Kong's autonomy and justifies the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party. Also, Soviet nationalism in the 20th century combined civic nationalism with [state] authoritarianism. Japanese ultranationalism (ex: Shōwa statism) is often described as "state ultranationalism" (Japanese: 超国家主義) because it values state unity around Emperor of Japan. Italian fascism and Francoism are also classified as types state nationalism. Kemalism can also be referred to as Turkish state nationalism. State feminism State feminism is a feminism permitted by the state or led by the nation state. State feminism is distinguished between liberal state feminism (represented by the Nordic model) and authoritarian state feminism (that is often also linked to state-led secularism). See also Anarchism and libertarianism Anarcho-capitalism Anti-statism Autocracy Big government and small government Fascism Federalism Imperialism Oligarchy Stateless society Sovereignty Subsidiarity Notes References Bibliography 1850s neologisms Controversies within libertarianism Economic systems Libertarian terms Political realism Political science terminology Political theories Sovereignty

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy, western-style democracy, or substantive democracy is a form of government that combines the organization of a democracy with ideas of liberal political philosophy. Common elements within a liberal democracy are: elections between or among multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, universal suffrage, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all citizens. Substantive democracy refers to substantive rights and substantive laws, which can include substantive equality, the equality of outcome for subgroups in society. Liberal democracy emphasizes the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and a system of checks and balances between branches of government. Multi-party systems with at least two persistent, viable political parties are characteristic of liberal democracies. Governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedure. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. A liberal democracy may take various and mixed constitutional forms: it may be a constitutional monarchy or a republic. It may have a parliamentary system, presidential system, or semi-presidential system. Liberal democracies are contrasted with illiberal democracies and dictatorships. Some liberal democracies, especially those with large populations, use federalism (also known as vertical separation of powers) in order to prevent abuse and increase public input by dividing governing powers between municipal, provincial and national governments. The characteristics of liberal democracies are correlated with increased political stability, lower corruption, better management of resources, and better health indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality. Liberal democracy traces its origins—and its name—to the Age of Enlightenment. The conventional views supporting monarchies and aristocracies were challenged at first by a relatively small group of Enlightenment intellectuals, who believed that human affairs should be guided by reason and principles of liberty and equality. They argued that all people are created equal, that governments exist to serve the people—not vice versa—and that laws should apply to those who govern as well as to the governed (a concept known as rule of law), formulated in Europe as Rechtsstaat. Some of these ideas began to be expressed in England in the 17th century. By the late 18th century, leading philosophers such as John Locke had published works that spread around the European continent and beyond. These ideas and beliefs influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution. After a period of expansion in the second half of the 20th century, liberal democracy became a prevalent political system in the world. Origins Liberal democracy traces its origins—and its name—to 18th-century Europe, during the Age of Enlightenment. At the time, the vast majority of European states were monarchies, with political power held either by the monarch or the aristocracy. The possibility of democracy had not been a seriously considered political theory since classical antiquity and the widely held belief was that democracies would be inherently unstable and chaotic in their policies due to the changing whims of the people. It was further believed that democracy was contrary to human nature, as human beings were seen to be inherently evil, violent and in need of a strong leader to restrain their destructive impulses. Many European monarchs held that their power had been ordained by God and that questioning their right to rule was tantamount to blasphemy. These conventional views were challenged at first by a relatively small group of Enlightenment intellectuals, who believed that human affairs should be guided by reason and principles of liberty and equality. They argued that all people are created equal and therefore political authority cannot be justified on the basis of noble blood, a supposed privileged connection to God or any other characteristic that is alleged to make one person superior to others. They further argued that governments exist to serve the people—not vice versa—and that laws should apply to those who govern as well as to the governed (a concept known as rule of law). Some of these ideas began to be expressed in England in the 17th century. There was renewed interest in Magna Carta, and passage of the Petition of Right in 1628 and Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 established certain liberties for subjects. The idea of a political party took form with groups debating rights to political representation during the Putney Debates of 1647. After the English Civil Wars (1642–1651) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689, which codified certain rights and liberties. The Bill set out the requirement for regular elections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring that, unlike almost all of Europe at the time, royal absolutism would not prevail. This led to significant social change in Britain in terms of the position of individuals in society and the growing power of Parliament in relation to the monarch. By the late 18th century, leading philosophers of the day had published works that spread around the European continent and beyond. One of the most influential of these philosophers was English empiricist John Locke, who refuted monarchical absolutism in his Two Treatises of Government. According to Locke, individuals entered into a social contract with a state, surrendering some of their liberties in exchange for the protection of their natural rights. Locke advanced that governments were only legitimate if they maintained the consent of the governed and that citizens had the right to instigate a rebellion against their government if that government acted against their interests. These ideas and beliefs influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution, which gave birth to the philosophy of liberalism and instituted forms of government that attempted to put the principles of the Enlightenment philosophers into practice. When the first prototypical liberal democracies were founded, the liberals themselves were viewed as an extreme and rather dangerous fringe group that threatened international peace and stability. The conservative monarchists who opposed liberalism and democracy saw themselves as defenders of traditional values and the natural order of things and their criticism of democracy seemed vindicated when Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the young French Republic, reorganized it into the first French Empire and proceeded to conquer most of Europe. Napoleon was eventually defeated and the Holy Alliance was formed in Europe to prevent any further spread of liberalism or democracy. However, liberal democratic ideals soon became widespread among the general population and over the 19th century traditional monarchy was forced on a continuous defensive and withdrawal. The Dominions of the British Empire became laboratories for liberal democracy from the mid 19th century onward. In Canada, responsible government began in the 1840s and in Australia and New Zealand, parliamentary government elected by male suffrage and secret ballot was established from the 1850s and female suffrage achieved from the 1890s. Reforms and revolutions helped move most European countries towards liberal democracy. Liberalism ceased being a fringe opinion and joined the political mainstream. At the same time, a number of non-liberal ideologies developed that took the concept of liberal democracy and made it their own. The political spectrum changed; traditional monarchy became more and more a fringe view and liberal democracy became more and more mainstream. By the end of the 19th century, liberal democracy was no longer only a liberal idea, but an idea supported by many different ideologies. After World War I and especially after World War II, liberal democracy achieved a dominant position among theories of government and is now endorsed by the vast majority of the political spectrum. Although liberal democracy was originally put forward by Enlightenment liberals, the relationship between democracy and liberalism has been controversial since the beginning and was problematized in the 20th century. In his book Freedom and Equality in a Liberal Democratic State, Jasper Doomen posited that freedom and equality are necessary for a liberal democracy. In his book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama says that since the French Revolution, liberal democracy has repeatedly proven to be a fundamentally better system (ethically, politically, economically) than any of the alternatives, and that democracy will become more and more prevalent in the long term, although it may suffer temporary setbacks. The research institute Freedom House today simply defines liberal democracy as an electoral democracy also protecting civil liberties. Rights and freedoms Political freedom is a central concept in history and political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies. Political freedom was described as freedom from oppression or coercion, the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions, or the absence of life conditions of compulsion, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society. Although political freedom is often interpreted negatively as the freedom from unreasonable external constraints on action, it can also refer to the positive exercise of rights, capacities and possibilities for action and the exercise of social or group rights. The concept can also include freedom from internal constraints on political action or speech (e.g. social conformity, consistency, or inauthentic behaviour). The concept of political freedom is closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights, which in democratic societies are usually afforded legal protection from the state. Laws in liberal democracies may limit certain freedoms. The common justification for these limits is that they are necessary to guarantee the existence of democracy, or the existence of the freedoms themselves. For example, democratic governments may impose restrictions on free speech, with examples including Holocaust denial and hate speech. Some discriminatory behavior may be prohibited. For example, public accommodations in the United States may not discriminate on the basis of "race, color, religion, or national origin." There are various legal limitations such as copyright and laws against defamation. There may be limits on anti-democratic speech, on attempts to undermine human rights and on the promotion or justification of terrorism. In the United States more than in Europe, during the Cold War such restrictions applied to communists. Now they are more commonly applied to organizations perceived as promoting terrorism or the incitement of group hatred. Examples include anti-terrorism legislation, the shutting down of Hezbollah satellite broadcasts and some laws against hate speech. Critics claim that these limitations may go too far and that there may be no due and fair judicial process. Opinion is divided on how far democracy can extend to include the enemies of democracy in the democratic process. If relatively small numbers of people are excluded from such freedoms for these reasons, a country may still be seen as a liberal democracy. Some argue that this is only quantitatively (not qualitatively) different from autocracies that persecute opponents, since only a small number of people are affected and the restrictions are less severe, but others emphasize that democracies are different. At least in theory, opponents of democracy are also allowed due process under the rule of law. Since it is possible to disagree over which rights are considered fundamental, different countries may treat particular rights in different ways. For example: The constitutions of Canada, India, Israel, Mexico and the United States guarantee freedom from double jeopardy, a right not provided in some other legal systems. Legal systems that use politically elected court jurors, such as Sweden, view a (partly) politicized court system as a main component of accountable government. Other democracies employ trial by jury with the intent of shielding against the influence of politicians over trials. Liberal democracies usually have universal suffrage, granting all adult citizens the right to vote regardless of ethnicity, sex, property ownership, race, age, sexuality, gender, income, social status, or religion. However, historically some countries regarded as liberal democracies have had a more limited franchise. Even today, some countries, considered to be liberal democracies, do not have truly universal suffrage. In some countries, members of political organizations with connections to historical totalitarian governments (for example formerly predominant communist, fascist or Nazi governments in some European countries) may be deprived of the vote and the privilege of holding certain jobs. In the United Kingdom people serving long prison sentences are unable to vote, a policy which has been ruled a human rights violation by the European Court of Human Rights. A similar policy is also enacted in most of the United States. According to a study by Coppedge and Reinicke, at least 85% of democracies provided for universal suffrage. Many nations require positive identification before allowing people to vote. For example, in the United States two thirds of the states require their citizens to provide identification to vote, which also provide state IDs for free. The decisions made through elections are made by those who are members of the electorate and who choose to participate by voting. In 1971, Robert Dahl summarized the fundamental rights and freedoms shared by all liberal democracies as eight rights: Freedom to form and join organizations. Freedom of expression. Right to vote. Right to run for public office. Right of political leaders to compete for support and votes. Freedom of alternative sources of information Free and fair elections. Right to control government policy through votes and other expressions of preference. Preconditions For a political regime to be considered a liberal democracy it must contain in its governing over a nation-state the provision of civil rights- the non-discrimination in the provision of public goods such as justice, security, education and health- in addition to, political rights- the guarantee of free and fair electoral contests, which allow the winners of such contests to determine policy subject to the constraints established by other rights, when these are provided- and property rights- which protect asset holders and investors against expropriation by the state or other groups. In this way, liberal democracy is set apart from electoral democracy, as free and fair elections – the hallmark of electoral democracy – can be separated from equal treatment and non-discrimination – the hallmarks of liberal democracy. In liberal democracy, an elected government cannot discriminate against specific individuals or groups when it administers justice, protects basic rights such as freedom of assembly and free speech, provides for collective security, or distributes economic and social benefits. According to Seymour Martin Lipset, although they are not part of the system of government as such, a modicum of individual and economic freedoms, which result in the formation of a significant middle class and a broad and flourishing civil society, are seen as pre-conditions for liberal democracy. For countries without a strong tradition of democratic majority rule, the introduction of free elections alone has rarely been sufficient to achieve a transition from dictatorship to democracy; a wider shift in the political culture and gradual formation of the institutions of democratic government are needed. There are various examples—for instance, in Latin America—of countries that were able to sustain democracy only temporarily or in a limited fashion until wider cultural changes established the conditions under which democracy could flourish. One of the key aspects of democratic culture is the concept of a loyal opposition, where political competitors may disagree, but they must tolerate one another and acknowledge the legitimate and important roles that each play. This is an especially difficult cultural shift to achieve in nations where transitions of power have historically taken place through violence. The term means in essence that all sides in a democracy share a common commitment to its basic values. The ground rules of the society must encourage tolerance and civility in public debate. In such a society, the losers accept the judgement of the voters when the election is over and allow for the peaceful transfer of power. According to Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira, this is tied to another key concept of democratic cultures, the protection of minorities, where the losers are safe in the knowledge that they will neither lose their lives nor their liberty and will continue to participate in public life. They are loyal not to the specific policies of the government, but to the fundamental legitimacy of the state and to the democratic process itself. One requirement of liberal democracy is political equality amongst voters (ensuring that all voices and all votes count equally) and that these can properly influence government policy, requiring quality procedure and quality content of debate that provides an accountable result, this may apply within elections or to procedures between elections. This requires universal, adult suffrage; recurring, free elections, competitive and fair elections; multiple political parties and a wide variety of information so that citizens can rationally and effectively put pressure onto the government, including that it can be checked, evaluated and removed. This can include or lead to accountability, responsiveness to the desires of citizens, the rule of law, full respect of rights and implementation of political, social and economic freedom. Other liberal democracies consider the requirement of minority rights and preventing tyranny of the majority. One of the most common ways is by actively preventing discrimination by the government (bill of rights) but can also include requiring concurrent majorities in several constituencies (confederalism); guaranteeing regional government (federalism); broad coalition governments (consociationalism) or negotiating with other political actors, such as pressure groups (neocorporatism). These split political power amongst many competing and cooperating actors and institutions by requiring the government to respect minority groups and give them their positive freedoms, negotiate across multiple geographical areas, become more centrist among cooperative parties and open up with new social groups. In a new study published in Nature Human Behaviour, Damian J. Ruck and his co-authors take a major step toward resolving this long-standing and seemingly irresolvable debate about whether culture shapes regimes or regimes shape culture. This study resolves the debate in favor of culture's causal primacy and shows that it is the civic and emancipative values (liberty, impartiality and contractarianism) among a country's citizens that give rise to democratic institutions, not vice versa. Liberal democracies around the world Several organizations and political scientists maintain lists of free and unfree states, both in the present and going back a couple centuries. Of these, the best known may be the Polity Data Set and that produced by Freedom House and Larry Diamond. There is agreement amongst several intellectuals and organizations such as Freedom House that the states of the European Union (with the exception of Poland and Hungary), United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Taiwan, United States, India, Canada, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Israel, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand are liberal democracies. Liberal democracies are susceptible to democratic backsliding and this is taking place or has taken place in several countries, including, but not limited to, the United States, Poland, Hungary, and Israel. Freedom House considers many of the officially democratic governments in Africa and the former Soviet Union to be undemocratic in practice, usually because the sitting government has a strong influence over election outcomes. Many of these countries are in a state of considerable flux. Officially non-democratic forms of government, such as single-party states and dictatorships, are more common in East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The 2019 Freedom in the World report noted a fall in the number of countries with liberal democracies over the 13 years from 2005 to 2018, citing declines in 'political rights and civil liberties'. The 2020 and 2021 reports document further reductions in the number of free countries in the world. Types Proportional vs. plurality representation Plurality voting system award seats according to regional majorities. The political party or individual candidate who receives the most votes, wins the seat which represents that locality. There are other democratic electoral systems, such as the various forms of proportional representation, which award seats according to the proportion of individual votes that a party receives nationwide or in a particular region. One of the main points of contention between these two systems is whether to have representatives who are able to effectively represent specific regions in a country, or to have all citizens' vote count the same, regardless of where in the country they happen to live. Some countries, such as Germany and New Zealand, address the conflict between these two forms of representation by having two categories of seats in the lower house of their national legislative bodies. The first category of seats is appointed according to regional popularity and the remainder are awarded to give the parties a proportion of seats that is equal—or as equal as practicable—to their proportion of nationwide votes. This system is commonly called mixed member proportional representation. The Australian Government incorporates both systems in having the preferential voting system applicable to the lower house and proportional representation by state in the upper house. This system is argued to result in a more stable government, while having a better diversity of parties to review its actions. The various state and territory governments in Australia employ a range of a different electoral systems. Presidential vs. parliamentary systems A presidential system is a system of government of a republic in which the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative. A parliamentary system is distinguished by the executive branch of government being dependent on the direct or indirect support of the parliament, often expressed through a vote of confidence. The presidential system of democratic government has been adopted in Latin America, Africa and parts of the former Soviet Union, largely by the example of the United States. Constitutional monarchies (dominated by elected parliaments) are present in Northern Europe and some former colonies which peacefully separated, such as Australia and Canada. Others have also arisen in Spain, East Asia and a variety of small nations around the world. Former British territories such as South Africa, India, Ireland and the United States opted for different forms at the time of independence. The parliamentary system is widely used in the European Union and neighbouring countries. Impact on economic growth Recent academic studies have found that democratisation is beneficial for national growth. However, the effect of democratisation has not been studied as yet. The most common factors that determine whether a country's economy grows or not are the country's level of development and the educational level of its newly elected democratic leaders. As a result, there is no clear indication of how to determine which factors contribute to economic growth in a democratic country. However, there is disagreement regarding how much credit the democratic system can take for this growth. One observation is that democracy became widespread only after the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of capitalism. On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution started in England which was one of the most democratic nations for its time within its own borders, but this democracy was very limited and did not apply to the colonies which contributed significantly to the wealth. Several statistical studies support the theory that a higher degree of economic freedom, as measured with one of the several Indices of Economic Freedom which have been used in numerous studies, increases economic growth and that this in turn increases general prosperity, reduces poverty and causes democratisation. This is a statistical tendency and there are individual exceptions like Mali, which is ranked as "Free" by Freedom House, but is a Least Developed Country, or Qatar, which has arguably the highest GDP per capita in the world, but has never been democratic. There are also other studies suggesting that more democracy increases economic freedom, although a few find no or even a small negative effect. Some argue that economic growth due to its empowerment of citizens will ensure a transition to democracy in countries such as Cuba. However, other dispute this and even if economic growth has caused democratisation in the past, it may not do so in the future. Dictators may now have learned how to have economic growth without this causing more political freedom. A high degree of oil or mineral exports is strongly associated with nondemocratic rule. This effect applies worldwide and not only to the Middle East. Dictators who have this form of wealth can spend more on their security apparatus and provide benefits which lessen public unrest. Also, such wealth is not followed by the social and cultural changes that may transform societies with ordinary economic growth. A 2006 meta-analysis found that democracy has no direct effect on economic growth. However, it has strong and significant indirect effects which contribute to growth. Democracy is associated with higher human capital accumulation, lower inflation, lower political instability and higher economic freedom. There is also some evidence that it is associated with larger governments and more restrictions on international trade. If leaving out East Asia, then during the last forty-five years poor democracies have grown their economies 50% more rapidly than nondemocracies. Poor democracies such as the Baltic countries, Botswana, Costa Rica, Ghana and Senegal have grown more rapidly than nondemocracies such as Angola, Syria, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe. Of the eighty worst financial catastrophes during the last four decades, only five were in democracies. Similarly, poor democracies are half likely as non-democracies to experience a 10 per cent decline in GDP per capita over the course of a single year. Justifications and support Increased political stability Several key features of liberal democracies are associated with political stability, including economic growth, as well as robust state institutions that guarantee free elections, the rule of law, and individual liberties. One argument for democracy is that by creating a system where the public can remove administrations, without changing the legal basis for government, democracy aims at reducing political uncertainty and instability and assuring citizens that however much they may disagree with present policies, they will be given a regular chance to change those who are in power, or change policies with which they disagree. This is preferable to a system where political change takes place through violence. One notable feature of liberal democracies is that their opponents (those groups who wish to abolish liberal democracy) rarely win elections. Advocates use this as an argument to support their view that liberal democracy is inherently stable and can usually only be overthrown by external force, while opponents argue that the system is inherently stacked against them despite its claims to impartiality. In the past, it was feared that democracy could be easily exploited by leaders with dictatorial aspirations, who could get themselves elected into power. However, the actual number of liberal democracies that have elected dictators into power is low. When it has occurred, it is usually after a major crisis has caused many people to doubt the system or in young/poorly functioning democracies. Some possible examples include Adolf Hitler during the Great Depression and Napoleon III, who became first President of the Second French Republic and later Emperor. Effective response in wartime By definition, a liberal democracy implies that power is not concentrated. One criticism is that this could be a disadvantage for a state in wartime, when a fast and unified response is necessary. The legislature usually must give consent before the start of an offensive military operation, although sometimes the executive can do this on its own while keeping the legislature informed. If the democracy is attacked, then no consent is usually required for defensive operations. The people may vote against a conscription army. However, actual research shows that democracies are more likely to win wars than non-democracies. One explanation attributes this primarily to "the transparency of the polities, and the stability of their preferences, once determined, democracies are better able to cooperate with their partners in the conduct of wars". Other research attributes this to superior mobilisation of resources or selection of wars that the democratic states have a high chance of winning. Stam and Reiter also note that the emphasis on individuality within democratic societies means that their soldiers fight with greater initiative and superior leadership. Officers in dictatorships are often selected for political loyalty rather than military ability. They may be exclusively selected from a small class or religious/ethnic group that support the regime. The leaders in nondemocracies may respond violently to any perceived criticisms or disobedience. This may make the soldiers and officers afraid to raise any objections or do anything without explicit authorisation. The lack of initiative may be particularly detrimental in modern warfare. Enemy soldiers may more easily surrender to democracies since they can expect comparatively good treatment. In contrast, Nazi Germany killed almost 2/3 of the captured Soviet soldiers and 38% of the American soldiers captured by North Korea in the Korean War were killed. Better information on and corrections of problems A democratic system may provide better information for policy decisions. Undesirable information may more easily be ignored in dictatorships, even if this undesirable or contrarian information provides early warning of problems. Anders Chydenius put forward the argument for freedom of the press for this reason in 1776. The democratic system also provides a way to replace inefficient leaders and policies, thus problems may continue longer and crises of all kinds may be more common in autocracies. Reduction of corruption Research by the World Bank suggests that political institutions are extremely important in determining the prevalence of corruption: (long term) democracy, parliamentary systems, political stability and freedom of the press are all associated with lower corruption. Freedom of information legislation is important for accountability and transparency. The Indian Right to Information Act "has already engendered mass movements in the country that is bringing the lethargic, often corrupt bureaucracy to its knees and changing power equations completely". Better use of resources Democracies can put in place better education, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, access to drinking water and better health care than dictatorships. This is not due to higher levels of foreign assistance or spending a larger percentage of GDP on health and education, as instead the available resources are managed better. Prominent economist Amartya Sen has noted that no functioning democracy has ever suffered a large scale famine. Refugee crises almost always occur in non-democracies. From 1985 to 2008, the eighty-seven largest refugee crises occurred in autocracies. Health and human development Democracy correlates with a higher score on the Human Development Index and a lower score on the human poverty index. Several health indicators (life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality) have a stronger and more significant association with democracy than they have with GDP per capita, rise of the public sector or income inequality. In the post-communist nations, after an initial decline those that are the most democratic have achieved the greatest gains in life expectancy. Democratic peace theory Numerous studies using many different kinds of data, definitions and statistical analyses have found support for the democratic peace theory. The original finding was that liberal democracies have never made war with one another. More recent research has extended the theory and finds that democracies have few militarized interstate disputes causing less than 1,000 battle deaths with one another, that those militarized interstate disputes that have occurred between democracies have caused few deaths and that democracies have few civil wars. There are various criticisms of the theory, including at least as many refutations as alleged proofs of the theory, some 200 deviant cases, failure to treat democracy as a multidimensional concept and that correlation is not causation. Minimization of political violence Rudolph Rummel's Power Kills says that liberal democracy, among all types of regimes, minimizes political violence and is a method of nonviolence. Rummel attributes this firstly to democracy instilling an attitude of tolerance of differences, an acceptance of losing and a positive outlook towards conciliation and compromise. A study published by the British Academy, on Violence and Democracy, argues that in practice, liberal democracy has not stopped those running the state from exerting acts of violence both within and outside their borders. The paper also argues that police killings, profiling of racial and religious minorities, online surveillance, data collection, or media censorship are a couple of ways in which successful states maintain a monopoly on violence. Objections and criticism Campaign costs In Athenian democracy, some public offices were randomly allocated to citizens, in order to inhibit the effects of plutocracy. Aristotle described the law courts in Athens which were selected by lot as democratic and described elections as oligarchic. Political campaigning in representative democracies can favor the rich due to campaign costs, a form of plutocracy where only a very small number of wealthy individuals can actually affect government policy in their favor and toward plutonomy. Stringent campaign finance laws can correct this perceived problem. Other studies predicted that the global trend toward plutonomies would continue, for various reasons, including "capitalist-friendly governments and tax regimes". However, they also say that, since "political enfranchisement remains as was—one person, one vote, at some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich." Economist Steven Levitt says in his book Freakonomics that campaign spending is no guarantee of electoral success. He compared electoral success of the same pair of candidates running against one another repeatedly for the same job, as often happens in United States congressional elections, where spending levels varied. He concludes: A winning candidate can cut his spending in half and lose only 1 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, a losing candidate who doubles his spending can expect to shift the vote in his favor by only that same 1 percent. On September 18, 2014, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page's study concluded "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism." Media Critics of the role of the media in liberal democracies allege that concentration of media ownership leads to major distortions of democratic processes. In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue via their Propaganda Model that the corporate media limits the availability of contesting views and assert this creates a narrow spectrum of elite opinion. This is a natural consequence, they say, of the close ties between powerful corporations and the media and thus limited and restricted to the explicit views of those who can afford it. Furthermore, the media's negative influence can be seen in social media where vast numbers of individuals seek their political information which is not always correct and may be controlled. For example, as of 2017, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news from social media, as well as a rising number of countries are exercising extreme control over the flow of information. This may contribute to large numbers of individuals using social media platforms but not always gaining correct political information. This may cause conflict with liberal democracy and some of its core principles, such as freedom, if individuals are not entirely free since their governments are seizing that level of control on media sites. The notion that the media is used to indoctrinate the public is also shared by Yascha Mounk's The People Vs Democracy which states that the government benefits from the public having a relatively similar worldview and that this one-minded ideal is one of the principles in which Liberal Democracy stands. Defenders responding to such arguments say that constitutionally protected freedom of speech makes it possible for both for-profit and non-profit organisations to debate the issues. They argue that media coverage in democracies simply reflects public preferences and does not entail censorship. Especially with new forms of media such as the Internet, it is not expensive to reach a wide audience, if an interest in the ideas presented exists. Limited voter turnout Low voter turnout, whether the cause is disenchantment, indifference or contentment with the status quo, may be seen as a problem, especially if disproportionate in particular segments of the population. Although turnout levels vary greatly among modern democratic countries and in various types and levels of elections within countries, at some point low turnout may prompt questions as to whether the results reflect the will of the people, whether the causes may be indicative of concerns to the society in question, or in extreme cases the legitimacy of the electoral system. Get out the vote campaigns, either by governments or private groups, may increase voter turnout, but distinctions must be made between general campaigns to raise the turnout rate and partisan efforts to aid a particular candidate, party or cause. Other alternatives include increased use of absentee ballots, or other measures to ease or improve the ability to vote, including electronic voting. Several nations have forms of compulsory voting, with various degrees of enforcement. Proponents argue that this increases the legitimacy—and thus also popular acceptance—of the elections and ensures political participation by all those affected by the political process and reduces the costs associated with encouraging voting. Arguments against include restriction of freedom, economic costs of enforcement, increased number of invalid and blank votes and random voting. Bureaucracy A persistent libertarian and monarchist critique of democracy is the claim that it encourages the elected representatives to change the law without necessity and in particular to pour forth a flood of new laws, as described in Herbert Spencer's The Man Versus The State. This is seen as pernicious in several ways. New laws constrict the scope of what were previously private liberties. Rapidly changing laws make it difficult for a willing non-specialist to remain law-abiding. This may be an invitation for law-enforcement agencies to misuse power. The claimed continual complication of the law may be contrary to a claimed simple and eternal natural law—although there is no consensus on what this natural law is, even among advocates. Supporters of democracy point to the complex bureaucracy and regulations that has occurred in dictatorships, like many of the former communist states. The bureaucracy in liberal democracies is often criticised for a claimed slowness and complexity of their decision-making. The term "red tape" is a synonym of slow bureaucratic functioning that hinders quick results in a liberal democracy. Short-term focus By definition, modern liberal democracies allow for regular changes of government. That has led to a common criticism of their short-term focus. In four or five years the government will face a new election and it must think of how it will win that election. That would encourage a preference for policies that will bring short term benefits to the electorate (or to self-interested politicians) before the next election, rather than unpopular policy with longer term benefits. This criticism assumes that it is possible to make long term predictions for a society, something Karl Popper has criticised as historicism. Besides the regular review of governing entities, short-term focus in a democracy could also be the result of collective short-term thinking. For example, consider a campaign for policies aimed at reducing environmental damage while causing temporary increase in unemployment. However, this risk applies also to other political systems. Majoritarianism The tyranny of the majority is the fear that a direct democratic government, reflecting the majority view, can take action that oppresses a particular minority. For instance, a minority holding wealth, property ownership or power (see Federalist No. 10), or a minority of a certain racial and ethnic origin, class or nationality. Theoretically, the majority is a majority of all citizens. If citizens are not compelled by law to vote, it is usually a majority of those who choose to vote. If such of group constitutes a minority, then it is possible that a minority could in theory oppress another minority in the name of the majority. However, such an argument could apply to both direct democracy or representative democracy. Several de facto dictatorships also have compulsory, but not "free and fair" voting in order to try to increase the legitimacy of the regime, such as North Korea. In her book World on Fire, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua posits that "when free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority's wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself". Cases that have been cited as examples of a minority being oppressed by or in the name of the majority include the practice of conscription and laws against homosexuality, pornography, and recreational drug use. Homosexual acts were widely criminalised in democracies until several decades ago and in some democracies like Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Tunisia, Nigeria, and Malaysia, they still are, reflecting the religious or sexual mores of the majority. The Athenian democracy and the early United States practiced slavery, and even proponents of liberal democracy in the 17th and 18th century were often pro-slavery, which is contradictory of a liberal democracy. Another often quoted example of the "tyranny of the majority" is that Adolf Hitler came to power by "legitimate" democratic procedures. The Nazi Party gained the largest share of votes in the democratic Weimar Republic in 1933. However, his regime's large-scale human rights violations took place after the democratic system had been abolished. Furthermore, the Weimar Constitution in an "emergency" allowed dictatorial powers and suspension of the essentials of the constitution itself without any vote or election. Proponents of democracy make a number of defenses concerning "tyranny of the majority". One is to argue that the presence of a constitution protecting the rights of all citizens in many democratic countries acts as a safeguard. Generally, changes in these constitutions require the agreement of a supermajority of the elected representatives, or require a judge and jury to agree that evidentiary and procedural standards have been fulfilled by the state, or two different votes by the representatives separated by an election, or sometimes a referendum. These requirements are often combined. The separation of powers into legislative branch, executive branch and judicial branch also makes it more difficult for a small majority to impose their will. This means a majority can still legitimately coerce a minority (which is still ethically questionable), but such a minority would be very small and as a practical matter it is harder to get a larger proportion of the people to agree to such actions. Another argument is that majorities and minorities can take a markedly different shape on different issues. People often agree with the majority view on some issues and agree with a minority view on other issues. One's view may also change, thus the members of a majority may limit oppression of a minority since they may well in the future themselves be in a minority. A third common argument is that despite the risks majority rule is preferable to other systems and the tyranny of the majority is in any case an improvement on a tyranny of a minority. All the possible problems mentioned above can also occur in non-democracies with the added problem that a minority can oppress the majority. Proponents of democracy argue that empirical statistical evidence strongly shows that more democracy leads to less internal violence and mass murder by the government. This is sometimes formulated as Rummel's Law, which states that the less democratic freedom a people have, the more likely their rulers are to murder them. Socialist and Marxist criticism Some socialists, such as The Left party in Germany, say that liberal democracy is a dishonest farce used to keep the masses from realizing that their will is irrelevant in the political process. Marxists and communists, as well as some non-Marxist socialists and anarchists, argue that liberal democracy under capitalism is constitutively class-based and therefore can never be democratic or participatory. They refer to it as "bourgeois democracy" because they say that ultimately, politicians fight mainly for the interests of the bourgeoisie. As such, liberal democracy is said to represent "the rule of capital". According to Karl Marx, representation of the interests of different classes is proportional to the influence which a particular class can purchase (through bribes, transmission of propaganda through mass media, economic blackmail, donations for political parties and their campaigns and so on). Thus, the public interest in so-called liberal democracies is systematically corrupted by the wealth of those classes rich enough to gain the appearance of representation. Because of this, he said that multi-party democracies under capitalism are always distorted and anti-democratic, their operation merely furthering the class interests of the owners of the means of production, and the bourgeois class becomes wealthy through a drive to appropriate the surplus-value of the creative labours of the working class. This drive obliges the bourgeois class to amass ever-larger fortunes by increasing the proportion of surplus-value by exploiting the working class through capping workers' terms and conditions as close to poverty levels as possible. Incidentally, this obligation demonstrates the clear limit to bourgeois freedom even for the bourgeoisie itself. According to Marx, parliamentary elections are no more than a cynical, systemic attempt to deceive the people by permitting them, every now and again, to endorse one or other of the bourgeoisie's predetermined choices of which political party can best advocate the interests of capital. Once elected, he said that this parliament, as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, enacts regulations that actively support the interests of its true constituency, the bourgeoisie (such as bailing out Wall St investment banks; direct socialisation/subsidisation of business—GMH, US/European agricultural subsidies; and even wars to guarantee trade in commodities such as oil). Vladimir Lenin once argued that liberal democracy had simply been used to give an illusion of democracy whilst maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, giving as an example the United States's representative democracy which he said consisted of "spectacular and meaningless duels between two bourgeois parties" led by "multimillionaires". The Chinese Communist Party political concept of whole-process people's democracy criticizes liberal democracy for excessively relying on procedural formalities without genuinely reflecting the interests of the people. Under this primarily consequentialist concept, the most important criteria for a democracy is whether it can "solve the people's real problems", while a system in which "the people are awakened only for voting" is not truly democratic. For example, the Chinese government's 2021 white paper China: Democracy that Works criticizes liberal democracy's shortcoming based on principles of whole process people's democracy. Religion Religious supremacism is not compatible with democracy or liberalism. Religious stances on democracy and liberalism vary and can change. The Catholic church opposed liberal democracy until 1965, when Second Vatican Council endorsed religious freedom. Religious democracy which prioritizes non-liberal religious values over liberal values has been criticized for not being a liberal democracy. Vulnerabilities Authoritarianism Authoritarianism is perceived by many to be a direct threat to the liberalised democracy practised in many countries. According to American political sociologist and authors Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner and Christopher Walker, undemocratic regimes are becoming more assertive. They suggest that liberal democracies introduce more authoritarian measures to counter authoritarianism itself and cite monitoring elections and more control on media in an effort to stop the agenda of undemocratic views. Diamond, Plattner and Walker uses an example of China using aggressive foreign policy against western countries to suggest that a country's society can force another country to behave in a more authoritarian manner. In their book 'Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy' they claim that Beijing confronts the United States by building its navy and missile force and promotes the creation of global institutions designed to exclude American and European influence; as such authoritarian states pose a threat to liberal democracy as they seek to remake the world in their own image. Various authors have also analysed the authoritarian means that are used by liberal democracies to defend economic liberalism and the power of political elites. War There are ongoing debates surrounding the effect that war may have on liberal democracy, and whether it cultivates or inhibits democratization. War may cultivate democratization by "mobilizing the masses, and creating incentives for the state to bargain with the people it needs to contribute to the war effort". An example of this may be seen in the extension of suffrage in the UK after World War I. War may however inhibit democratization by "providing an excuse for the curtailment of liberties". Terrorism Several studies have concluded that terrorism is most common in nations with intermediate political freedom, meaning countries transitioning from autocratic governance to democracy. Nations with strong autocratic governments and governments that allow for more political freedom experience less terrorism. Populism There is no one agreed upon definition of populism, with a broader definition settled upon following a conference at the London School of Economics in 1967. Academically, the term "populism" faces criticism that it should be abandoned as a descriptor due to its vagueness. It is typically not fundamentally undemocratic, but it is often anti-liberal. Many will agree on certain features that characterize populism and populists: a conflict between 'the people' and 'the elites', with populists siding with 'the people' and strong disdain for opposition and negative media using labels such as 'fake news'. Populism is a form of majoritarianism, threatening some of the core principles of liberal democracy such as the rights of the individual. Examples of these can vary from freedom of movement via control on immigration, or opposition to liberal social values such as gay marriage. Populists do this by appealing to the feelings and emotions of the people whilst offering solutions - often vastly simplified - to complex problems. Populism is a particular threat to the liberal democracy because it exploits the weaknesses of the liberal democratic system. A key weakness of liberal democracies highlighted in 'How Democracies Die', is the conundrum that suppressing populist movements or parties can be seen to be illiberal. Another reason that populism is a threat to liberal democracy is because it exploits the inherent differences between 'Democracy' and 'Liberalism'. For liberal democracy to be effective, a degree of compromise is required as protecting the rights of the individual take precedence if they are threatened by the will of the majority, more commonly known as a tyranny of the majority. Majoritarianism is so ingrained in populism that this core value of a liberal democracy is under threat. This therefore brings into question how effectively liberal democracy can defend itself from populism. According to Takis Papas in his work Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis, "democracy has two opposites, one liberal, the other populist". Whereas liberalism accepts a notion of society composed of multiple divisions, populism only acknowledges a society of 'the people' versus 'the elites'. The fundamental beliefs of the populist voter consist of: the belief that oneself is powerless and is a victim of the powerful; a "sense of enmity" rooted in "moral indignation and resentfulness"; and a "longing for future redemption" through the actions of a charismatic leader. Papas says this mindset results in a feeling of victimhood caused by the belief that the society is "made up of victims and perpetrators". Other characteristic of a populist voter is that they are "distinctively irrational" because of the "disproportionate role of emotions and morality" when making a political decision like voting. Moreover, through self-deception they are "wilfully ignorant". In addition, they are "intuitively… and unsettlingly principled" rather than a more "pragmatic" liberal voter. An example of a populist movement is the 2016 Brexit campaign. The role of the 'elite' in this circumstance was played by the EU and 'London-centric liberals', while the Brexit campaign appealed to workers in industries such as agriculture who were allegedly worse off due to EU membership. This case study also illustrates the potential threat populism can pose to a liberal democracy with the movement heavily relying on disdain for the media. This was done by labeling criticism of Brexit as 'Project Fear'. See also Constitutional liberalism Classical liberalism Centrism Conservative liberalism Democratic backsliding Democratic ideals Economic liberalism Elective rights Good governance History of democracy Illiberal democracy Index of politics articles Jeffersonian democracy Neoliberalism Republicanism Social democracy Social liberalism Liberal conservatism References Further reading Ghasemi, Mehdi. "Paradigms of Postmodern Democracy." SAGE Open, 2019, April–June: 1–6. Haas, Michael (2014). Deconstructing the 'Democratic Peace': How a Research Agenda Boomeranged. Los Angeles, CA: Publishinghouse for Scholars. Willard, Charles Arthur (1996). Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy. University of Chicago Press. . . Democracy Types of democracy

Postnationalism

Postnationalism or non-nationalism is the process or trend by which nation states and national identities lose their importance relative to cross-nation and self-organized or supranational and global entities as well as local entities. Although postnationalism is not strictly considered the antonym of nationalism, the two terms and their associated assumptions are antithetic as postnationalism is an internationalistic process. There are several factors that contribute to aspects of postnationalism, including economic, political, and cultural elements. Increasing globalization of economic factors (such as the expansion of international trade with raw materials, manufactured goods, and services, and the importance of multinational corporations and internationalization of financial markets) have shifted emphasis from national economies to global ones. At the same time, socio-political power is partially transferred from national authorities to supernational entities, such as multinational corporations, the United Nations, the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and NATO. In addition, media and entertainment industries are becoming increasingly global and facilitate the formation of trends and opinions on a supranational scale. Migration of individuals or groups between countries contributes to the formation of postnational identities and beliefs, even though attachment to citizenship and national identities often remains important. Postnationalism and human rights In the scholarly literature, postnationalism is linked to the expansion of international human rights law and norms. International human rights norms are reflected in a growing stress on the rights of individuals in terms of their "personhood," not just their citizenship. International human rights law does not recognize the right of entry to any state by non-citizens, but demands that individuals should be judged increasingly on universal criteria not particularistic criteria (such as blood descent in ethnicity, or favoring a particular sex). This has impacted citizenship and immigration law, especially in western countries. The German parliament, for example, has felt pressure to, and has diluted (if not eradicated), citizenship based on ethnic descent, which had caused German-born Turks, for example, to be excluded from German citizenship. Scholars identified with this argument include Yasemin Soysal, David Jacobson, and Saskia Sassen. In the European Union European integration has created a system of supranational entities and is often discussed in relationship to the concept of postnationalism. In Canada During the 2011 election, John Ibbitson argued that in the fading issues of the "Laurentian Consensus" were responsible for turning Canada into the first post-national state. In 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while defining Canadian values, also declared his country to be the world’s first post-national state. Writing in Le Devoir in 2019, Robert Dutrisac described multiculturalism as an ideology associated with English Canada. In opposition to the perceived shift toward post-nationalism in Canada, John Weissenberger has argued that it is the Laurentian elite themselves who have "diluted the 'Laurentian' nature of the class and boosted their disdain for national character." In the media Catherine Frost, professor of political science at McMaster University, argues that while the Internet and online social relations forge social and political bonds across national borders, they do not have "the commitment or cohesiveness needed to underpin a demanding new mode of social and political relations". Nonetheless, it has been argued the increasing options of obtaining virtual citizenship from established nations (e.g., E-Residency of Estonia) and micronations can be seen as examples of what citizenship might look like in a post-national world. In sports Postnational trends have been evident in professional sports. Simon Kuper called the 2008 European soccer championship (UEFA Euro 2008) "the first postnational" European Championship. He argues that during the tournament both for players and fans sportsmanship and enjoyment of the event were more important than national rivalries or even winning. See also Anti-globalization movement Digital currency Global citizenship Identity politics Transnationalism Tribe (Internet) Types of nationalism World Wide Web Constitutional patriotism Civic nationalism References Bibliography Globalization Political science terminology

Grassroots democracy

Grassroots democracy is a tendency towards designing political processes that shift as much decision-making authority as practical to the organization's lowest geographic or social level of organization. Grassroots organizations can have a variety of structures; depending on the type of organization and what the members want. These can be non-structured and non-hierarchical organizations that are run by all members, or by whichever member wishes to do something. To cite a specific hypothetical example, a national grassroots organization would place as much decision-making power as possible in the hands of local chapters or common members instead of the head office. The principle is that for democratic power to be best exercised it must be vested in a local community and common members and instead of isolated, atomized individuals, at the top of the organization. Grassroots organizations can inhabit participatory systems. Grassroots systems differ from representative systems that allow local communities or national memberships to elect representatives who then go on to make decisions. The difference among the three systems comes down to where they rest on two different axes: the rootedness in a community (grassroots versus national or international); and the ability of all individuals to participate in the shared decision-making process (participatory versus representative). As an economic system Grassroots democracy is a key component of libertarian socialist political philosophies, which, for various reasons, advocate putting firms under the control of local communities or councils. For example, eco-socialists argue that firms should be controlled by the group of people whose ecosystem is directly affected by that firm's activity. Meanwhile, Anarchists view contemporary forms of employment as examples of unjust and unnecessary forms of hierarchy and centralization. Finally, Libertarian Marxists view history as a struggle between various social groups where the inclusive nature of a grassroots economy will enable new socioeconomic groups to emerge such that these struggles will abate, thereby, improving the human condition. See also References Political terminology Types of democracy

Deliberative democracy

Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. Deliberative democracy seeks quality over quantity by limiting decision-makers to a smaller but more representative sample of the population that is given the time and resources to focus on one issue. It often adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere voting, is the primary source of legitimacy for the law. Deliberative democracy is related to consultative democracy, in which public consultation with citizens is central to democratic processes. The distance between deliberative democracy and concepts like representative democracy or direct democracy is debated. While some practitioners and theorists use deliberative democracy to describe elected bodies whose members propose and enact legislation, Hélène Landemore and others increasingly use deliberative democracy to refer to decision-making by randomly-selected lay citizens with equal power. Deliberative democracy has a long history of practice and theory traced back to ancient times, with an increase in academic attention in the 1990s, and growing implementations since 2010. Joseph M. Bessette has been credited with coining the term in his 1980 work Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government. Overview Deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Authentic deliberation is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtains through economic wealth or the support of interest groups. The roots of deliberative democracy can be traced back to Aristotle and his notion of politics; however, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas' work on communicative rationality and the public sphere is often identified as a major work in this area. Deliberative democracy can be practiced by decision-makers in both representative democracies and direct democracies. In elitist deliberative democracy, principles of deliberative democracy apply to elite societal decision-making bodies, such as legislatures and courts; in populist deliberative democracy, principles of deliberative democracy apply to groups of lay citizens who are empowered to make decisions. One purpose of populist deliberative democracy can be to use deliberation among a group of lay citizens to distill a more authentic public opinion about societal issues for other decision-makers to consider; devices such as the deliberative opinion poll have been designed to achieve this goal. Another purpose of populist deliberative democracy can, like direct democracy, result directly in binding law. If political decisions are made by deliberation but not by the people themselves or their elected representatives, then there is no democratic element; this deliberative process is called elite deliberation. James Fearon and Portia Pedro believe deliberative processes most often generate ideal conditions of impartiality, rationality and knowledge of the relevant facts, resulting in more morally correct outcomes. Former diplomat Carne Ross contends that the processes more civil, collaborative, and evidence-based than the debates in traditional town hall meetings or in internet forums if citizens know their debates will impact society. Some fear the influence of a skilled orator. John Burnheim critiques representative democracy as requiring citizens to vote for a large package of policies and preferences bundled together, much of which a voter might not want. He argues that this does not translate voter preferences as well as deliberative groups, each of which are given the time and the ability to focus on one issue. Characteristics Fishkin's model of deliberation James Fishkin, who has designed practical implementations of deliberative democracy through deliberative polling for over 15 years in various countries, describes five characteristics essential for legitimate deliberation: Information: The extent to which participants are given access to reasonably accurate information that they believe to be relevant to the issue Substantive balance: The extent to which arguments offered by one side or from one perspective are answered by considerations offered by those who hold other perspectives Diversity: The extent to which the major positions in the public are represented by participants in the discussion Conscientiousness: The extent to which participants sincerely weigh the merits of the arguments Equal consideration: The extent to which arguments offered by all participants are considered on the merits regardless of which participants offer them Studies by James Fishkin and others have concluded that deliberative democracy tends to produce outcomes which are superior to those in other forms of democracy. Desirable outcomes in their research include less partisanship and more sympathy with opposing views; more respect for evidence-based reasoning rather than opinion; a greater commitment to the decisions taken by those involved; and a greater chance for widely shared consensus to emerge, thus promoting social cohesion between people from different backgrounds. Fishkin cites extensive empirical support for the increase in public spiritedness that is often caused by participation in deliberation, and says theoretical support can be traced back to foundational democratic thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. Cohen's outline Joshua Cohen, a student of John Rawls, argued that the five main features of deliberative democracy include: An ongoing independent association with expected continuation. The citizens in the democracy structure their institutions such that deliberation is the deciding factor in the creation of the institutions and the institutions allow deliberation to continue. A commitment to the respect of a pluralism of values and aims within the polity. The citizens consider deliberative procedure as the source of legitimacy, and prefer the causal history of legitimation for each law to be transparent and easily traceable to the deliberative process. Each member recognizes and respects other members' deliberative capacity. Cohen presents deliberative democracy as more than a theory of legitimacy, and forms a body of substantive rights around it based on achieving "ideal deliberation": It is free in two ways: The participants consider themselves bound solely by the results and preconditions of the deliberation. They are free from any authority of prior norms or requirements. The participants suppose that they can act on the decision made; the deliberative process is a sufficient reason to comply with the decision reached. Parties to deliberation are required to state reasons for their proposals, and proposals are accepted or rejected based on the reasons given, as the content of the very deliberation taking place. Participants are equal in two ways: Formal: anyone can put forth proposals, criticize, and support measures. There is no substantive hierarchy. Substantive: The participants are not limited or bound by certain distributions of power, resources, or pre-existing norms. "The participants…do not regard themselves as bound by the existing system of rights, except insofar as that system establishes the framework of free deliberation among equals." Deliberation aims at a rationally motivated consensus: it aims to find reasons acceptable to all who are committed to such a system of decision-making. When consensus or something near enough is not possible, majoritarian decision making is used. In Democracy and Liberty, an essay published in 1998, Cohen updated his idea of pluralism to "reasonable pluralism" – the acceptance of different, incompatible worldviews and the importance of good faith deliberative efforts to ensure that as far as possible the holders of these views can live together on terms acceptable to all. Gutmann and Thompson's model Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson's definition captures the elements that are found in most conceptions of deliberative democracy. They define it as "a form of government in which free and equal citizens and their representatives justify decisions in a process in which they give one another reasons that are mutually acceptable and generally accessible, with the aim of reaching decisions that are binding on all at present but open to challenge in the future". They state that deliberative democracy has four requirements, which refer to the kind of reasons that citizens and their representatives are expected to give to one another: Reciprocal. The reasons should be acceptable to free and equal persons seeking fair terms of cooperation. Accessible. The reasons must be given in public and the content must be understandable to the relevant audience. Binding. The reason-giving process leads to a decision or law that is enforced for some period of time. The participants do not deliberate just for the sake of deliberation or for individual enlightenment. Dynamic or Provisional. The participants must keep open the possibility of changing their minds, and continuing a reason-giving dialogue that can challenge previous decisions and laws. Standards of good deliberation - from first to second generation (Bächtiger et al., 2018) For Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge and Warren, the ideal standards of "good deliberation" which deliberative democracy should strive towards have changed: History Early examples Consensus-based decision making similar to deliberative democracy has been found in different degrees and variations throughout the world going back millennia. The most discussed early example of deliberative democracy arose in Greece as Athenian democracy during the sixth century BC. Athenian democracy was both deliberative and largely direct: some decisions were made by representatives but most were made by "the people" directly. Athenian democracy came to an end in 322 BC. Even some 18th century leaders advocating for representative democracy mention the importance of deliberation among elected representatives. Recent scholarship The deliberative element of democracy was not widely studied by academics until the late 20th century. According to Professor Stephen Tierney, perhaps the earliest notable example of academic interest in the deliberative aspects of democracy occurred in John Rawls 1971 work A Theory of Justice. Joseph M. Bessette has been credited with coining the term "deliberative democracy" in his 1980 work Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government, and went on to elaborate and defend the notion in "The Mild Voice of Reason" (1994). In the 1990s, deliberative democracy began to attract substantial attention from political scientists. According to Professor John Dryzek, early work on deliberative democracy was part of efforts to develop a theory of democratic legitimacy. Theorists such as Carne Ross advocate deliberative democracy as a complete alternative to representative democracy. The more common view, held by contributors such as James Fishkin, is that direct deliberative democracy can be complementary to traditional representative democracy. Others contributing to the notion of deliberative democracy include Carlos Nino, Jon Elster, Roberto Gargarella, John Gastil, Jürgen Habermas, David Held, Joshua Cohen, Amy Gutmann, Noëlle McAfee, Rense Bos, Jane Mansbridge, Jose Luis Marti, Dennis Thompson, Benny Hjern, Hal Koch, Seyla Benhabib, Ethan Leib, Charles Sabel, Jeffrey K. Tulis, David Estlund, Mariah Zeisberg, Jeffrey L. McNairn, Iris Marion Young, Robert B. Talisse, and Hélène Landemore. Although political theorists took the lead in the study of deliberative democracy, political scientists have in recent years begun to investigate its processes. One of the main challenges currently is to discover more about the actual conditions under which the ideals of deliberative democracy are more or less likely to be realized. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Shmuel Lederman laments the fact that "deliberation and agonism have become almost two different schools of thought" that are discussed as "mutually exclusive conceptions of politics" as seen in the works of Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and William E. Connolly. Giuseppe Ballacci argues that agonism and deliberation are not only compatible but mutually dependent: "a properly understood agonism requires the use of deliberative skills but also that even a strongly deliberative politics could not be completely exempt from some of the consequences of agonism". Most recently, scholarship has focused on the emergence of a 'systemic approach' to the study of deliberation. This suggests that the deliberative capacity of a democratic system needs to be understood through the interconnection of the variety of sites of deliberation which exist, rather than any single setting. Some studies have conducted experiments to examine how deliberative democracy addresses the problems of sustainability and underrepresentation of future generations. Although not always the case, participation in deliberation has been found to shift participants opinions in favour of environmental positions. Platforms and algorithms Aviv Ovadya also argues for implementing bridging-based algorithms in major platforms by empowering deliberative groups that are representative of the platform's users to control the design and implementation of the algorithm. He argues this would reduce sensationalism, political polarization and democratic backsliding. Jamie Susskind likewise calls for deliberative groups to make these kind of decisions. Meta commissioned a representative deliberative process in 2022 to advise the company on how to deal with climate misinformation on its platforms. Modern examples The OECD documented hundreds of examples and finds their use increasing since 2010. For example, a representative sample of 4000 lay citizens used a 'Citizens' congress' to coalesce around a plan on how to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. See also Deliberative assembly Deliberative referendum Group decision making Jury Informed consent Liquid democracy Mediated deliberation Open source governance Participatory democracy Political equality Public reason References Sources Bessette, Joseph (1980) "Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government," in How Democratic is the Constitution?, Washington, D.C., AEI Press. pp. 102–116. Bessette, Joseph, (1994) The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy & American National Government Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Blattberg, C. (2003) "Patriotic, Not Deliberative, Democracy" Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 6, no. 1, pp. 155–74. Reprinted as ch. 2 of Blattberg, C. (2009) Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. Cohen, J. (1989) "Deliberative Democracy and Democratic Legitimacy" (Hamlin, A. and Pettit, P. eds.), The Good Polity. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 17–34 Cohen, J. (1997) "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy" (James Bohman & William Rehg eds.) Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Bohman, J. and Rehg, W. eds.). Fishkin, James & Peter Laslett, eds. (2003). Debating Deliberative Democracy. Wiley-Blackwell. Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson (1996). Democracy and Disagreement. Princeton University Press. Gutmann, Amy and Dennis Thompson (2002). Why Deliberative Democracy? Princeton University Press. Leib, Ethan J. "Can Direct Democracy Be Made Deliberative?", Buffalo Law Review, Vol. 54, 2006 Owen, D. and Smith, G. (2015). "Survey article: Deliberation, democracy, and the systemic turn." Journal of Political Philosophy 23.2: 213-234 Painter, Kimberly, (2013) "Deliberative Democracy in Action: Exploring the 2012 City of Austin Bond Development Process" Applied Research Project Texas State University. Steenhuis, Quinten. (2004) "The Deliberative Opinion Poll: Promises and Challenges". Carnegie Mellon University. Unpublished thesis. Available Online Talisse, Robert, (2004) Democracy after Liberalism Publisher: Routledge Thompson, Dennis F (2008). "Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science," Annual Review of Political Science 11: 497-520. Tulis, Jeffrey K., (1988) The Rhetorical Presidency Publisher: Princeton University Press Tulis, Jeffrey K., (2003) "Deliberation Between Institutions," in Debating Deliberative Democracy, eds. James Fishkin and Peter Laslett. Wiley-Blackwell. Uhr, J. (1998) Deliberative Democracy in Australia: The Changing Place of Parliament, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Further reading Deliberative Democracy for Diabolical Times'' (2024) by André Bächtiger and John S. Dryzek. Cambridge University Press. External links Website of Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra describes itself as "the world-leading research centre for the study of deliberative democracy" Website of the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University, which focuses on researching, advising on and conducting deliberative polling Website of Journal of Deliberative Democracy, which synthesizes the research, opinions, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in an open-access journal Website of The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, which is a hub that connects people to each other and to thousands of resources like best-practices on public engagement and conflict resolution Podcast series by the newDemocracy Foundation on deliberative democracy among other initiatives Direct democracy Political theories Deliberative groups Group decision-making Communication Participatory democracy Types of democracy

Democratic ideals

Democratic ideals is an expression used to refer to personal qualities or standards of government behavior that are felt to be essential for the continuation of a democratic policy. In the 20th century, T. H. Marshall proposed what he believed to be central democratic ideals in his seminal essay on citizenship, citing three different kinds of rights: civil rights that are the basic building blocks of individual freedom; political rights, which include the rights of citizens to participate in order to exercise political power; and finally social rights, which include the right to basic economic welfare and security. The importance of human rights is often listed as a central democratic ideal, as well as instilling in military and civilian governmental personnel the attitudes and methods which will prevent their actions from infringing on those rights. The United States Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States is an example of the democratic ideal of human rights and liberties being implemented in the foundation of a country's governance. These individual freedoms include freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial. Voter enfranchisement and political participation are two key democratic ideals that ensure the engagement of citizens in the political sphere. Who has the right to suffrage has changed over the centuries and universal suffrage is necessary for a nation to be considered a democracy and not a dictatorship. These resemble similarities within the British Parliament system, where there’s a makeshift hierarchy but the American upper house holds more importance in terms of power within the political system. The British political system is also made up of an executive, legislative and judicial branch which runs throughout the Westminster Parliament. The executive branch is made up of ministers who run the country, are responsible for proposing legislation and developing foreign internal policies, headed by the Prime Minister. All government ministers are members of the legislative branch, also reflective of the American political system. The Supreme Court is the highest court within the political system of Great Britain, which is where the judicial branch ensures that laws are passed, obeyed and reviewed by a senior minister. The British Parliament consists of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Monarch. The system is bicameral, meaning Lords as the upper house and Commons as the lower. The House of Commons has the most authority above all in British politics, it consists of 650 seats with each person representing a different part of the United Kingdom - This is called a constituency. Other uses of the term In historical texts, the phrase is often used to denote aspirations or norms of behavior, separate from a functioning democracy, including egalitarianism, self-government, self-determination and freedom of conscience. See also References Democracy Political ideologies Concepts in political philosophy

Fourth Estate

The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. The derivation of the term arises from the traditional European concept of the three estates of the realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The equivalent term "fourth power" is somewhat uncommon in English, but it is used in many European languages, including German (Vierte Gewalt), Italian (quarto potere), Spanish (Cuarto poder), French (Quatrième pouvoir), Swedish (tredje statsmakten [Third Estate]), Polish (Czwarta Władza), and Russian (четвёртая власть) to refer to a government's separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The expression has also been applied to lawyers, to the British Queen Consort (acting as a free agent independent of her husband), and to the proletariat. But, generally, the term "Fourth Estate" refers to the press and media, emphasizing its role in monitoring and influencing the other branches of government and society. The concept originally comes from the idea of four estates in medieval European society: First Estate: The Clergy - This group included religious leaders and institutions, which held significant power and influence over people's lives and societal norms. Second Estate: The Nobility - This consisted of the aristocracy and landowners, who had political power and social status. Third Estate: The Commoners - This group comprised the general populace, including peasants, merchants, and the burgeoning middle class, who were not part of the clergy or nobility. The "Fourth Estate" emerged with the rise of the press, which became a powerful force in shaping public opinion and holding other estates accountable. A "Fifth Estate," while it’s not traditionally recognized in the same way as the first four, some argue that modern digital media and the internet could be considered a Fifth Estate. This "Fifth Estate" includes bloggers, social media influencers, and other online platforms that can influence public discourse and politics independently of traditional media. Etymology Oxford English Dictionary attributes, ("without confirmation") the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who may have used it in a British parliamentary debate of 19–20 February 1771, on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Historian Thomas Carlyle reported the phrase in his account of the night's proceedings, published in 1840, attributing it to Burke. The press In modern use, the term is applied to the press, with the earliest use in this sense described by Thomas Carlyle in his book On Heroes and Hero Worship (1840): "Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all." (The three estates of the parliament of Britain were: the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons.) If Burke made the statement Carlyle associates with him, Carlyle may have had the remark in mind when he wrote in his French Revolution (1837) that "A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable." In France the three estates of the French States-General were: the church, the nobility and enfranchised townsmen. Carlyle, however, may have mistaken his attribution: Thomas Macknight, writing in 1858, observes that Burke was merely a teller at the "illustrious nativity of the Fourth Estate". If Burke is excluded, other candidates for coining the term are Henry Brougham speaking in Parliament in 1823 or 1824 and Thomas Macaulay in an essay of 1828 reviewing Hallam's Constitutional History: "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm." In 1821, William Hazlitt applied the term to an individual journalist, William Cobbett, and the phrase soon became well established. In 1891, Oscar Wilde wrote: In United States English, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government", a term that originated because no direct equivalents to the estates of the realm exist in the United States. The "fourth estate" is used to emphasize the independence of the press, while the "fourth branch" suggests that the press is not independent of the government. The networked Fourth Estate Yochai Benkler, author of the 2006 book The Wealth of Networks, described the "Networked Fourth Estate" in a May 2011 paper published in the Harvard Civil Liberties Review. He explains the growth of non-traditional journalistic media on the Internet and how it affects the traditional press using WikiLeaks as an example. When Benkler was asked to testify in the United States vs. PFC Bradley E. Manning trial, in his statement to the morning 10 July 2013 session of the trial he described the Networked Fourth Estate as the set of practices, organizing models, and technologies that are associated with the free press and provide a public check on the branches of government. It differs from the traditional press and the traditional fourth estate in that it has a diverse set of actors instead of a small number of major presses. These actors include small for-profit media organizations, non-profit media organizations, academic centers, and distributed networks of individuals participating in the media process with the larger traditional organizations. Alternative meanings Lawyers In 1580 Michel de Montaigne proposed that governments should hold in check a fourth estate of lawyers selling justice to the rich and denying it to rightful litigants who do not bribe their way to a verdict: Michel de Montaigne, in the translation by John Florio, 1603. The proletariat An early citation for this is Henry Fielding in The Covent Garden Journal (1752): This sense has prevailed in other countries: In Italy, for example, striking workers in 1890s Turin were depicted as —The Fourth Estate—in a painting by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo. A political journal of the left, Quarto Stato, published in Milan, Italy, in 1926, also reflected this meaning. In response to violence against a textile worker demonstration in Fourmies, France on May Day 1891, Georges Clemenceau said in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies: Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola saw the Fourth Estate as the final point of his historical cycle theory, the regression of the castes: British queens consort In a parliamentary debate of 1789 Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford, MP, demanded of minister William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham that he should not allow powers of regency to "a fourth estate: the queen". This was reported by Burke, who, as noted above, went on to use the phrase with the meaning of "press". U.S. Department of Defense In the United States government's Department of Defense, the "fourth estate" (also called the "back office") refers to 28 agencies that do not fall under the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Examples include the Defense Technology Security Administration, Defense Technical Information Center, and Defense Information Systems Agency. Fiction In his novel The Fourth Estate, Jeffrey Archer wrote: "In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, commoners." The book is fiction based on the lives of two real-life press barons, Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch. See also Fourth branch of government Freedom of the press Fifth Estate Glossary of journalism Government by Journalism List of newspapers in the United States The Fourth Estate (2018 TV series) References Journalism Separation of powers 1770s neologisms

Anocracy

Anocracy, or semi-democracy, is a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features". Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances." The term "semi-democratic" is reserved for stable regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian elements. Scholars distinguish anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Anocratic regimes have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition. Such regimes are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership. The operational definition of anocracy is extensively used by scholars Monty G. Marshall and Benjamin R. Cole at the Center for Systemic Peace, and that definition was widely disseminated through the polity data series. This data set aims to measure democracy in different states and uses anocracy as one of its classifications for regime type. Consequently, anocracy frequently appears in democratization literature that utilizes the polity data set. Anocratic regimes, also known as hybrid regimes, are known for having guided democracy instead of liberal democracy. They combine authoritarian powers with some democratic practices, for example holding elections that are competitive to some degree. In a closed anocracy, competitors are drawn from the elite. In an open anocracy, others also compete. The number of anocratic regimes has steadily increased over time, with the most notable jump occurring after the end of the Cold War. From 1989 to 2013, the number of anocracies increased from 30 to 53. Characteristics Human rights The instability of anocratic regimes causes human rights violations to be significantly higher within anocracies than democratic regimes. According to Maplecroft's 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, eight of the top ten worst human-rights-violating countries are anocracies. In addition, the report categorized every current anocracy as "at risk" or at "extreme risk" of human rights offenses. The high correlation between anocratic regimes and human rights abuses denotes the nonlinear progression in a country's transition from an autocracy to a democracy. Generally, human rights violations substantially decrease when a certain threshold of full democracy is reached. However, human rights abuses tend to remain the same or even to increase as countries move from an autocratic to an anocratic regime. During the revolutions of the Arab Spring, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen, all of the countries made relative progress towards more democratic regimes. With many of the authoritarian practices of their governments remaining, those states currently fall under the category of anocracies. They are also listed as some of the most extreme human-rights-violating countries in the world. The violations include torture, police brutality, slavery, discrimination, unfair trials, and restricted freedom of expression. Research has shown that political protests, such as those that occurred during the Arab Spring, generally lead to an increase in human right violations, as the existing government tries to retain power and influence over governmental opposition. Therefore, transitioning governments tend to have high levels of human rights abuses. In its annual Freedom in the World report, Freedom House scored states’ violations of civil liberties on a seven-point scale, with a score of seven representing the highest percentage of violations. Freedom House defined civil liberty violations as the infringement of freedom of expression, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and individual rights. Most consolidated democracies received scores of one, but almost all anocracies were scored between four and six because of the high percentage of civil liberties violations in most anocratic regimes. Violence Statistics show that anocracies are ten times more likely to experience intrastate conflict than democracies and twice as likely as autocracies. One explanation for the increase in violence and conflict within anocracies is a theory known as More Murder in the Middle (MMM). The theory argues that the unstable characteristics of anocratic regimes, which include the presence of divided elites, inequality, and violent challengers who threaten the legitimacy of the current social order, cause governing elites to resort to much more political repression or state terror than do democratic or authoritarian regimes. That leads to high levels of what are termed "life-integrity violations," which include state-sponsored genocide, extrajudicial executions, and torture. State life-integrity violations can be categorized as acts of state terror. Acts of terrorism by both governmental and outside groups are generally higher in transitioning anocratic governments than in either democratic or authoritarian regimes. Harvard Public Policy Professor Alberto Abadie argues that the tight control of an authoritarian regime is likely to discourage terrorist activities in the state. However, without the stability of a clear authoritarian rule or a consolidated democracy, anocracies are more open and susceptible to terrorist attacks. He notes that in Iraq and previously Spain and Russia, transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy were accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism. According to the political terror scale (PTS), a data set that ranks state sponsored violence on a five-point scale, almost every anocracy is ranked as having a score between three and five. On the scale, a score of three indicates that in a state, "there is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted." States are ranked as a four when "civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves in politics or ideas." Scores of five are given to states if "terror has expanded to the whole population. The leaders of these societies place no limits on the means or thoroughness with which they pursue personal or ideological goals." Although only eleven states were given scores of five in the 2012 Political Terror Scale report, four of those states, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan, were classified by the polity data series as anocracies. Civil war There are differing views on whether or not anocracy leads to civil war. It is debated whether or not transitions between government regimes or political violence lead to civil war. Civil wars in unstable countries are usually the outcome of a country's inability to meet the population's demands. The inability of the state to provide for the needs of the population leads to factionalism within the country. When factions are not able to get what they want, they take up arms against the state. Former democracies that transition to anocracy have a greater risk of being embroiled in civil conflict. The population's awareness of what rights they had as a democratic society may compel them to fight to regain their rights and liberties. On the other hand, autocracies that transition into anocracies are less likely to break out in civil war. Not all anocracies are unstable. There are many countries that are stable but are classified as anocracies, such as Russia. It is the transitional qualities associated with some anocracies that are predictive of civil conflict. The magnitude of the transition also affects the probability of a civil conflict. The higher the magnitude of the transition, the higher the likelihood of civil war. However, some international relations experts use the polity data series in the formulation of their hypothesis and study, which presents a problem because the Polity IV system uses violence and civil war as factors in its computation of a country's polity score. Two components, "the degree of institutionalization, or regulation, of political competition," and "the extent of government restriction on political competition," are problematic to use in any study involving Polity IV and civil war in anocratic governments. In the numeric rating system of one of these parts of Polity IV, unregulated, "may or may be characterized by violent conflict among partisan groups." The other component states that "there are relatively stable and enduring political groups - but competition among them is intense, hostile, and frequently violent." The only thing that can be deduced concretely is that political violence tends to lead to civil war. There is no solid evidence to support that political institutions in an anocracy leads to civil war. Broadness and complexity While the first three characteristics capture the instability of anocracies, another feature of anocratic regimes is their broad descriptiveness. Anocracy describes a regime type with a mix of institutional characteristics that either constrains or promotes the democratic process, "encapsulating a complex category encompassing many institutional arrangements." Although anocracies demonstrate some capacity for civil society and political participation, their autocratic and democratic counterparts show considerably more or less capabilities. Thus, while scholars are easily able to identify democratic and autocratic regimes based on their respective characteristics, anocracies become a wider, "catchall" category for all other regimes. However, despite its broadness and complexity, the convention is still used because of its relevance to civil instability as well as its usage in the polity data series. Examples Africa At the end of World War II, European control over its colonial territories in Africa diminished. During the period of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, many African states gained independence. Although these newly independent African states could become either democratic or autocratic regimes, manageability issues made way for autocratic regimes to come into power. Most underdeveloped African states that did become democracies in this period failed within 10 years and transitioned to autocracies. For about 30 years after 1960, the number of autocratic regimes in Africa rose from 17 to 41 as the number of democratic regimes stayed around five. After the fall of communist states in Europe and the rise of democratization at the end of the Cold War, Africa experienced a major political transformation. In the 1990s, the number of autocracies decreased to nine, and the number of democracies increased to nine since many African countries remained anocratic. By 2012, Africa had three autocracies, 17 democracies, and 30 anocracies. By 2013, most African countries had remained either open or closed anocracies. As African states transition from autocracy to anocracy and from anocracy to democracy, electoral conflicts and violence remain prevalent. Nigeria With a polity score of four in 2014, Nigeria is categorized as an open anocracy, transitioning closer to democracy than autocracy. In recent years, Nigeria has displayed characteristics of anocratic regimes including political corruption and electoral riggings. Following years of military rule after gaining independence in 1960 to 1999 except for 1979 to 1983, the 2007 general elections marked the first time in Nigerian history that political leadership was passed from one civilian to another by an election. However, in late 2006, just months before the April 2007 general election, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo used state institutions to try to defeat political opponents as he attempted to win a third presidential term. Using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), an institution created by his administration, the former president had some of his political enemies and their family members arrested or detained. Despite the electoral conflicts, some Nigerians view their country as running on democratic principles because military power has been controlled by political elites for 15 years. However, those electoral conflicts, combined with state governors using legislative and judiciary power to win elections repeatedly, suggests that Nigeria remains an anocracy. Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan was accused of abusing his power in an attempt to remain in office after 2015, despite claiming his presidency advocated democratic principles. The Administration of President Buhari has also seen State forces used in ways that can be at times described as anti-democratic by State Governors and agents of the Federal Government Somalia Somalia was labeled as an autocracy from 1969 to 2012, with a polity score of negative seven throughout the entire period. From 1969 to 1991, Siad Barre was the military dictator of the Somali Democratic Republic. After Barre was overthrown in 1991, two decades of chaos ensued, as civil war broke out and rival warlords fought to gain power. The consistent fighting of tribal leaders and warlords made the country unable to deal with natural disasters, droughts, and famines, which caused a combined 500,000 deaths in famines in 1992 and 2010 to 2012. After years of being split into fiefdoms, the main Somali warlords established an agreement to appoint a new president in 2004. However, the plan failed when Islamist insurgents, including the radical youth militia al-Shabaab, which has links to Al-Qaeda, gained control over much of southern Somalia from 2006 to 2008. With the assistance of international peacekeeping offensives and the Kenyan army, the Islamist insurgents were forced to withdraw in 2012. In the same year, the first formal parliament in over 20 years was appointed in Somalia. The newly formed parliament chose Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as the new president in September 2012. With international assistance, the Somali government has been able to rebuild itself and the country has recently been relatively more stable. Since 2013, Somalia has retained a polity score of five and is listed as an open anocracy. Uganda In the 1990s, Uganda transitioned from an autocracy to a closed anocracy. Although Uganda saw a jump in its polity score in the mid-2000s, it has retained a polity score of negative two for the last decade. Uganda is populated by many ethnic groups with the largest, the Buganda group, making up 17% of the population. Since Uganda gained independence in 1962, incessant conflict has ensued among approximately 17 ethnic groups, which has led to political instability. The dictator Idi Amin was responsible for around 300,000 deaths under his rule from 1971 to 1979, and guerrilla warfare from 1980 to 1985 under Milton Obote killed 100,000 people. Human rights abuses under both rulers led to even more deaths from 1971 to 1985. In the early 1990s, Uganda experienced large-scale violent dissent as the country experienced more rebellions and guerrilla warfare. As a result of the wars, the government called for non-party presidential and legislative elections in the mid-1990s. A period of relative peace followed, as a common law legal system was instituted in 1995. Uganda transitioned from an authoritarian regime to a closed anocracy. The political situation of Uganda has seen little improvement under the rule of Yoweri Museveni, who has maintained power since 1986 because other political organizations in Uganda cannot sponsor candidates. Only Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) can operate without any limitations, leading to electoral conflicts and violence. Zimbabwe When Robert Mugabe became president in 1980, Zimbabwe was listed as an open anocracy with a polity score of four. By 1987, the country had almost fully transitioned to an authoritarian regime, with a polity score of negative six, which made it a closed anocracy. After remaining on the border between an authoritarian regime and closed anocracy for over a decade, Zimbabwe's polity score increased in the early 2000s. Currently, Zimbabwe has a polity score of 4, making it an open anocracy. In recent years, Zimbabwe has moved toward becoming a more democratic regime, but electoral conflicts and human rights violations still exist leaving Zimbabwe as an anocratic regime. In the late 1990s, when Zimbabwe was a closed anocracy, the country experienced major human rights violations. Labor strikes were common, as employers did not listen to the demands of their employees, and real wages fell by 60 percent from 1992 to 1997. The labor strikes that occurred in the late 1990s were declared illegal by the government of Zimbabwe, and blame was put on poor working-class citizens. As labor laws continued hurting workers, health services declined, and housing projects stagnated. Since becoming president in 1980, Mugabe used a variety of tactics to remain in power that led to major electoral conflicts over the years. In the March 2008 presidential election, the electoral body reported that Morgan Tsvangirai, the presidential candidate of the opposing party, had received more votes than Mugabe. However, because Tsvangirai received 48% of the vote and not an absolute majority, it was announced that a runoff would take place. Using intimidation tactics, including murder threats, Mugabe and his party forced Tsvangirai to withdraw from the runoff, and Mugabe remained in power. A US-led United Nations Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on Mugabe failed, and talks about powersharing between Mugabe and Tsvangirai ended soon after the runoff. After an opposing party candidate, Lovemore Moyo, won Speaker of the Legislature, a powersharing coalition was finally set up in September 2008 in which Tsvangirai was named prime minister. By 2010 the polity score of Zimbabwe had increased from one to four. However, in 2013, Mugabe won his seventh straight presidential term, and the election was criticized for being rigged to allow Mugabe to win. Asia Burma Burma, or the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, is classified as an anocracy because of adverse armed conflict, changes in leadership, and the partly democratic, partly authoritarian nature of its government. Burma had a representative democracy after it gained independence from Britain. Soon after independence was achieved, there was an outbreak of various insurgencies and rebellions. Many of the insurgencies were caused by divides along ethnic lines. One of the most prominent civil wars in Burma, the Kachin conflict, restarted in 2011, and Burma is still embroiled in a civil war. Burma has had a history of changes in government, usually by military coups. In 1962, General Ne Win enacted a military coup and created the Burma Socialist Programme Party, which held power for 26 years. On September 18, 1988, General Saw Maung led another military coup to return the government to the people and created the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which was renamed State Peace and Development Council. After holding free and legitimate elections in May 1990, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won with Aung San Suu Kyi at its head. However, the military junta refused to give up power to the NLD. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), backed by the military, won the 2010 elections and the military government was dissolved soon afterward. The Burmese government shows signs of having democratic as well as authoritarian features. Burma is a pseudodemocratic state because of the elections that were held in 1990 and 2010. However, both elections were problematic because the military did not transfer power to the winning party in 1990, and the 2010 elections were seen as illegitimate. Violent repression is the biggest signifier of the authoritarian nature of the Burmese government. The Win regime was marked by extreme oppression and human rights abuses and as a result, Burmese civilians and students protested against the government. The Burmese government responded violently to the protests and the Tatmadaw, or Myanmar Armed Forces, killed many of the protestors. After the coup in 1988 by General Maung, the protests were violently suppressed again, as Maung's government proceeded to implement martial law to bring peace and order. Cambodia Cambodia is an example of anocracy because its government displays democratic and authoritarian aspects. Under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, Cambodia implemented an electoral system based on proportional representation, held legitimate elections, and instituted a parliamentary system of government. The constitution created on 21 September 1993 indicated that Cambodia was a parliamentary government with a constitutional monarchy. Cambodia exhibited signs of a democratic state, especially with the presence of elections and a proportionally representative government. After the coup in 1997, the Cambodian government has taken more authoritarian measures to keep peace in the country. Protests have been suppressed violently by pro-government forces and many human rights activists and protesters have been arrested by the Cambodian government. Cambodia shows signs of being an unstable government with abrupt changes in leadership, making it an anocracy. The initial elections led to FUNCINPEC's victory, under the leadership of Prince Ranariddh. FUNCINPEC and the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party won 68 out of 120 seats in the National Assembly. The Cambodian People's Party, led by Hun Sen, refused to accept the outcome. Although a coalitional government was created with Prince Ranariddh as the First Prime Minister and Sen as the Second Prime Minister, the deal failed as Sen led a coup d'état on July 5, 1997. Sen and the CPP have been in power ever since, and the CPP recently won a general election against the Cambodia National Rescue Party, led by Sam Rainsy. Thailand Thailand's history of leadership changes make it an anocratic state. Thailand has been in a constant state of political upheaval since 1993. Coups d'état and widespread political corruption are the main causes of political instability. Thailand experienced a period of political liberalization under General Prem Tinsulanonda, an unelected prime minister from 1980 to 1988. A series of coups ensued soon afterward. General Suchinda Kraprayoon led a coup against Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan on February 23, 1991. After the Black May incident, Suchinda was forced to resign, and Anand Panyarachun was assigned the position of temporary prime minister. Thaksin Shinawatra won the 2001 elections and became prime minister; he won again in 2005 but was deposed in the 2006 Thai coup d'état. After a new constitution was adopted, Samak Sundaravej and his People's Power Party (Thailand) won the 2007 election, and Sundaravej became prime minister. However, a conflict of interest caused Sundaravej to be ousted, and Somchai Wongsawat was elected as the new prime minister. Shortly after his election, Prime Minister Wongsawat and the PPP was found guilty of electoral fraud, and Wongsawat lost his position. Abhisit Vejjajiva's election as the next prime minister was met with opposition by "Red Shirts." On July 3, 2011, Yingluck Shinawatra, belonging to the Pheu Thai Party, was elected as prime minister. After mass protests in 2013, Shinawatra was deposed by a military coup led by General Prayut Chan-o-cha, who was prime minister until 2023. Successful transitions to democracy Anocratic regimes are often implicitly mentioned in democratic transition literature. There are numerous examples of regimes that have successfully transitioned to democracy from anocracy. Mexico Mexico's transition from an anocratic to democratic regime occurred in the 1980s and the 1990s on the electoral stage. The period was characterized by the rise of multiple parties, the decline of power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and the decentralization of power from the national level to municipalities. The democratization process produced competitive elections with less voting fraud, culminating with the 1994 presidential election. There was also a documented increase in the role of media and journalism during this period, which led to the creation of various special interest groups, such as those representing the environment, indigenous rights, and women's rights. However, violence continues to remain a characteristic of Mexico's local elections. Taiwan At the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan. The constitution used by the Republic of China to govern Taiwan guaranteed civil rights and elections, but it was ignored in favor of rule under martial law. Taiwan's pro-democracy movement gained momentum in the early 1980s and coalesced into the formation of the Democratic Progressive Party in 1986. Over the next decade, Taiwan attempted to restore the civil rights promised in its constitution, culminating with Taiwan's first direct presidential election in 1996. Taiwan continues to move towards a consolidated democracy. Ghana In 1991, Ghana was listed as an autocratic regime with a polity score of negative seven. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ghana was an open anocracy. In 2005, Ghana successfully transitioned from an open anocracy to a democracy as it has retained a polity score of eight since 2006. A major part of Ghana's success can be attributed to its management of the electoral process to decrease electoral conflict. Since Ghana began having elections in 1992, the strengthening of government institutions such as a strong, independent electoral commission has decreased electoral conflict. The existence of civil society organizations and a media aimed at ensuring democratic principles have also helped manage electoral conflicts in Ghana. For example, Ghana's 2008 elections ended peacefully, as political institutions were able to respond to electoral challenges and advance democratic principles and processes. However, some electoral conflicts remain on a small scale in Ghana such as ethnic vote blocking, vote buying, intimidation, and hate speeches. Yet, even with those minor conflicts, Ghana has been able to transform from an anocracy to a democracy by decreasing electoral conflicts. Etymology Use of the word "anocracy" in English dates back to at least 1950, when R. F. C. Hull's reprinted translation of Martin Buber's 1946 work Pfade in Utopia (Paths in Utopia) distinguished "an-ocracy" (neoclassical compound: ἀκρατία akratia) from "anarchy", and defined "an-ocracy" as meaning "not absence of government but absence of domination". The word "anocracy" is a mistranslation by Hull of Buber's word "Akratie". See also Autocracy Absolute monarchy Defective democracy Democratic backsliding Despotism Dictatorship Illiberal democracy References Democratization Mixed government Types of democracy

Epistemic democracy

Epistemic democracy refers to a range of views in political science and philosophy which see the value of democracy as based, at least in part, on its ability to make good or correct decisions. Epistemic democrats believe that the legitimacy or justification of democratic government should not be exclusively based on the intrinsic value of its procedures and how they embody or express values such as fairness, equality, or freedom. Instead, they claim that a political system based on political equality can be expected to make good political decisions, and possibly decisions better than any alternative form of government (e.g., oligarchy, aristocracy, or dictatorship).        Theories of epistemic democracy are therefore concerned with the ability of democratic institutions to do such things as communicate, produce, and utilise knowledge, engage in forms of experimentation, aggregate judgements and solve social problems. Based on such abilities, democracy is said to be able to track some standard of correctness, such as the truth, justice, the common good, or the collective interest. Epistemic democracy as such does not recommend any particular form of democracy – whether it be direct, representative, participatory, or deliberative – and epistemic democrats themselves disagree over such questions. Instead, they are united by a common concern for the epistemic value of inclusive and equal political arrangements. Epistemic democrats are therefore often associated with ideas such as collective intelligence and the wisdom of crowds.   Epistemic (or proto epistemic) arguments for democracy have a long history in political thought and can be found in the work of figures such as Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Nicolas de Condorcet, and John Dewey. In contemporary political philosophy and political science, advocates of epistemic democracy include David Estlund, Hélène Landemore, Elizabeth Anderson, Joshua Cohen, Robert Goodin, and Kai Spiekermann. Overview Theories of epistemic democracy see the value of democracy as based, at least in part, on the ability of democratic procedures to make good or correct decisions, where ‘good’ and ‘correct’ are normally defined in respect to some procedure-independent standard. This independent standard may be the truth, justice, the common good, or the collective interest. Epistemic democrats therefore claim that democracy is not valuable solely because it embodies or expresses certain intrinsic values. Instead, it is thought to (also) take decisions which can track some conception of the truth, justice or the common good. Such views therefore often take there to be an important instrumental component to any defence or justification of democratic government. Views along these lines are helpfully contrasted with purely procedural theories of democracy. Pure proceduralism refers to the view that the value and justification of democracy rests solely in the fairness or intrinsic value of democratic institutions. What matters on these views is that democracy embodies or expresses important values – such as equality, freedom, or autonomy – rather than the quality of the outcomes they produce. The only way to evaluate the quality of a political decision on such a view is therefore to look back at the procedure which produced it. They ask whether the decision was taken in a free and fair manner, and if so, judge it to be a good decision. In contrast, epistemic democrats think that political decisions can be judged by some standards which are independent of the procedures which produced them. They can therefore ask, irrespective of whether the decision was taken in a free or fair way, did it track some conception of the truth, justice, or the common good? Epistemic democracy is therefore analogous to what John Rawls referred to as ‘imperfect procedural justice’. Rawls states that imperfect procedural justice takes there to be independent criteria which define whether an outcome is correct or better. Unlike perfect procedural justice, however, which takes there to be a procedure which can guarantee the right outcome, imperfect procedural justice looks for procedures which can achieve the right outcomes to some level of reliability. An example is trial by jury where legal guilt or innocence are the standards of correctness which the jury aims at in their decision. While there is no guarantee that juries will always convict the guilty and not the innocent, they are thought to track these standards most of the time and therefore with some level of reliability.     For epistemic democrats, then, democracy is analogous to a criminal trial but where the independent standards are not legal guilt or innocence, but truth, justice or the common good. While there is no guarantee that democratic decisions will always track these standards, epistemic democrats argue that they will tend to track them, or that they will tend to track them more often than their alternatives. An argument for the epistemic merits of democracy will therefore be probabilistic. They claim that democracy ‘tends’ to produce good decisions, not that it always will. Because it sees independent standards as an important part of democracy, epistemic democrats must reject forms of pure proceduralism where democracy is valuable for exclusively intrinsic reasons. They do not, however, necessarily need to deny any procedural or intrinsic value to democracy. Arguments about the ability of democracy to achieve independent standards are freestanding and conceptually independent of procedural arguments. Epistemic democracy therefore includes positions which take democracy to be solely justified on epistemic grounds, and positions which combine epistemic and procedural considerations. While epistemic democracy is commonly defined in respect to the importance placed on procedure-independent standards, there are a range of epistemological accounts of democracy which do not clearly fit this description. One example is pragmatist inspired views which focus on how the justification of democracy is based not on certain moral or ethical values but rather our epistemic commitments. For instance, if we wish to have correct beliefs, it may be that we should be open to all objections and arguments against our existing views, and this then commits us to an open and inclusive process of inquiry. Contemporary advocates for this kind of view include Robert Talisse and Cheryl Misak. Jürgen Habermas’ democratic theory similarly involves an epistemic component in that he sees deliberation as a process for testing validity claims, such as to empirical truth or moral rightness, which aim to gain acceptance. He, however, considers his view to be a pure proceduralist one. Fabienne Peter also offers a view she calls ‘pure epistemic proceduralism’ which does not rely on independent standards of correctness. Instead, she argues that a decision is legitimate ‘if it is the outcome of a process that satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness’. As a result, the definition of epistemic democracy may be drawn more broadly to include not only accounts which involve procedure-independent standards, but any epistemic considerations. Historical Background While they remain a current topic of discussion within political science and philosophy, Hélène Landemore argues that epistemic arguments for democracy have a long pedigree within the history of political thought. She suggest that these arguments date back at least to the Greeks and can be found in a diverse range of authors including Machiavelli, Spinoza, Rousseau, Condorcet, John Stuart Mill and John Dewey. In what Jeremy Waldron has referred to as "the doctrine of the wisdom of the multitude", for instance, Aristotle offers a version of such an argument focused on democratic deliberation. This can be found in book III, chapter 11, of the Politics:   Aristotle also refers to the feast analogy in chapter 15: These passages seem to suggest that group deliberation may allow for better results than can be produced by any one individual because it allows for the pooling of information, arguments, insights, and experiences. Just as people will make different contributions to a feast, they will offer varied contributions to political decision making so that the group is superior to the one. It is unclear, however, whether Aristotle meant this argument as a defence of democracy. This is because an oligarchy or aristocracy may also benefit from this collective pooling of talents when compared to the decisions of a single king or dictator. Waldron therefore suggests that while a strong interpretation of Aristotle’s wisdom of the multitude would see it as defending democratic deliberation over the deliberations of any smaller group, a weaker interpretation would see it as only rejecting rule by one. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s account of the general will may also be interpreted as offering an epistemic argument for democratic rule. In The Social Contract, for instance, he writes: Landemore suggests an epistemic reading of this passage. According to this interpretation Rousseau describes the idea that citizens should vote based on their judgements about whether a proposal coheres with an independent standard of correctness, such as the common interest or good, and that the outcome of a majority vote will offer the correct judgement. This is also suggested in Rousseau’s claim that those whose judgement differed from those of the majority should conclude that they there therefore mistaken. In another passage Rousseau also appears to appeal to the statistical benefits of aggregation and large numbers. In comparing the ‘general will’ to ‘the will of all’ he writes:   Rousseau’s appeal to pluses and minuses cancelling out is similar to the theory of the Miracle of Aggregation found in more recent work in epistemic democracy (discussed further below). This miracle refers to the idea that if errors are randomly distributed, then they will tend to cancel each other out when votes are aggregated, and therefore the majority decision is only influenced by correct votes. These epistemic readings of Rousseau are controversial, however, given that he can also be interpreted in more procedural terms where the general will refers simply to whatever the people want. A clearer appeal to the benefits of large numbers can be found in Nicolas de Condorcet’s Essays on the Application of Mathematics to the Theory of Decision Making. Providing a mathematical account of the benefits of large groups to decision making, Condorcet argued that majoritarian decisions are all but certain to select the correct option on a simple yes-no decision. This claim required three assumptions to be met: (1) voters make their decisions independently of each other; (2) voters make their decisions sincerely rather than strategically; and (3) each voter has a probability of selecting the correct answer which is greater than 0.5. As long as these conditions hold, then as the voting group becomes larger, the probability that they will select the right answer moves towards 1. While Condorcet developed this theorem with the aim of determining the optimal size of a jury – hence it often being referred to as Condorcet’s jury theorem – it is easy to see how this can also be applied to the votes of a democratic electorate including all of the population rather than a subset (see contemporary discussion of the theorem below). Another key figure in the historical tradition which informs work on epistemic democracy is the American pragmatist John Dewey. Dewey’s democratic theory offers, in part, a view of democracy as a process of experimentation and inquiry. Rather than seeing it as synonymous with formal political institutions, Dewey instead thought of democracy as a ‘mode of associated living’ which occurred when people came together to identify and solve their collective problems. Democracy provides a process where common sets of problems and interests can be clarified, and solutions debated. Dewey therefore thought that an exclusive focus on majority rule was misplaced, and that the value of democracy came from the preceding public discussion and debates where experiences and values could be expressed, and minorities could voice their opposition. It is through this collective process of inquiry that social intelligence could emerge. This process had to include the public as they had particular knowledge of where social problems occurred given that they experience them directly. As Dewey famously put it, ‘the man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches’ . A properly functioning democracy still required an educated population, however, and Dewey therefore placed much emphasis on educative reforms aimed at improving citizen competence. Procedure-Independent Standards Contemporary work in epistemic democracy can be broadly separated into two general categories. The first is more foundationalist work concerned with determining the importance and role of independent standards of correctness in any justification of democracy. Such work is therefore concerned with showing why a consideration of such standards is necessary and how best to incorporate them into a democratic theory. The second category, considered in following sections, is work focused on the more practical task of showing why democratic institutions can in fact track these independent standards, or why we should have confidence that they will make better decisions than non-democratic alternatives. In contemporary debates David Estlund is often credited with offering the most developed defence of the importance of procedure-independent standards to the justification of democracy. Estlund argues that most defences of democracy either implicitly assume such standards or remain too weak to justify democratic rule. One of his most influential arguments is that if we were to care only for issues of procedural fairness, then we should be as happy with deciding political issues through the flip of a coin as we are through democratic procedures of majority rule. A random procedure, such as a coin flip or the roll of a dice, gives equal weight to the preferences of citizens and would therefore appear to be as procedurally fair as a democratic vote. Estlund therefore argues that if we prefer a democratic vote to a purely random decision, then it must be because we expect it to make the correct decisions with greater reliability than chance. Estlund is careful to distinguish his epistemic view from what he calls a ‘correctness theory’ of democracy. According to this theory, a political decision would be legitimate only in the case where it is correct. Any democratic decision which happened to be incorrect would therefore be illegitimate. Instead of a correctness theory, Estlund claims that epistemic democrats can see democracy as legitimate because of its ability to produce good decisions over time.   Jose Luis Marti, alternatively, argues that our normal practices of democratic debate and deliberation tends to implicitly assume some independent standards of correctness. They suggest that to argue in favour of a certain decision, say policy A, is to aim to show that policy A is the right decision, or that it is better in terms of rightness than policy B, C or D. To engage in political deliberation about competing policies is therefore said to require one to appeal to some standard of correctness other than the political procedure itself. If the only mark of a decision was the decision-making procedure itself, then there could not be any argument or reason for making any particular decision, as making arguments and giving reasons means to appeal to some standard independent of the process and at least somewhat independent of the participants’ beliefs and desires.   What, however, are the independent standards which define the quality of political decisions? Epistemic democracy as a broad position allows for a number of answers to this question. The view does not, as some may think, require an endorsement of moral realism about the existence of objective moral facts. Although these standards are independent of the real political decision procedure, they may be dependent on other things. For instance, they may be dependent on an idealised procedure – such as John Rawls’ original position or Jürgen Habermas’ ideal speech situation – or on the norms and practices of a particular community. Nor are epistemic democrats committed to any crude form of consequentialism as the independent standards may themselves involve deontological or virtue constraints, such as respect for basic human rights. Epistemic democracy is consistent with many metaethical positions. A couple of strategies are therefore open to epistemic democrats when considering the role of procedure-independent standards. The first is to specify a particular independent standard. For instance, they could define the standard as the maximisation of happiness or an equality of welfare, and then look to see if democratic institutions meet this standard. Alternatively, they could define the standard as the avoidance of certain bad outcomes, such as wars or famines. The second strategy is to remain ignorant or agnostic on the standards which define a good decision, and instead look for those procedures which can discover correct answers, whatever they may be. Democratic procedures would therefore be like the institutions of science. We value the scientific method not because we know the correct answer in advance, but rather because we have confidence that it will be able to discover the correct answer when followed. Most epistemic democrats endorse the second strategy. The first faces the problem that people often reasonably disagree over how to define the procedure-independent standards of correctness, and it therefore risks making the justification of democracy dependent on a controversial account of justice or the common good. It also appears problematic from a democratic point of view because it suggests an account of good political decisions can be determined independently of democratic procedures. It may therefore be objected that such questions should themselves be decided by democratic means.   The second strategy has itself come under criticism. Sean Ingham, for instance, argues that if democratic procedures could discover the correct answer to political questions, then they would seem to bring an implausibly swift end to our deeply held and persistent disagreements. Imagine, for instance, that we had a democratic procedure which had a 99% chance of selecting the correct answer. Given that this procedure is near infallible, its result would provide such strong evidence in favour of one option that we would all have to accept it as true, even if we disagreed beforehand. While a 99% reliability may be implausible, Ingham points out that even if the democratic procedure only had a reliability of just over half, then running it multiple times would provide sufficient evidence for us to change our minds. If democracy can track the truth of political questions it would therefore seem to suggest that we can easily settle our long-held disagreements over what counts as a just political decision. Although this argument does not reject the existence of independent standards, it does suggest that their acceptance may be in tension with the idea that there is deep and reasonable political disagreement in society. Models of Epistemic Democracy While some theories of epistemic democracy focus on explaining the importance and role of epistemic considerations, others look to explain why it is that democratic procedures can be thought to make good or correct decisions. Some epistemic democrats merely wish to show that democracy can make these decisions with some level of reliability, but others go further in arguing that democracy will tend to make better decisions than any non-democratic alternative. In other words, they aim to show that decisions taken by the many are superior to those taken by the few. Prominent epistemic arguments for democracy within contemporary political science and democratic theory include the following:       Jury Theorems: While first proposed by Nicolas de Condorcet in 1785, discussion of jury theorems and their connection to democracy has continued into contemporary discussion. The original theorem stated that a choice between two options is best made by a large group if: (1) voters make their decisions independently of each other; (2) voters make their decisions sincerely rather than strategically; and (3) each voter has a probability of selecting the correct answer which is greater than 0.5. Under these conditions the probability of the correct option being selected tends towards 1 as the size of the voting group increases. This means that a democratic vote which includes the whole of the demos will be more reliable than any non-democratic vote which includes a smaller number of voters. Contemporary work on the jury theorem has then aimed to relax these assumptions. The theorem has, for instance, been applied to cases of plural voting with multiple options, where voters have lowly correlated votes, and where they make their minds up autonomously instead of fully independently. In a recent study that employed measure-theoretic techniques to explore the probability of the theorem's thesis in various settings, it was discovered that the competence of majority rule as a decision procedure is heavily reliant on the probability measure governing voter competence. The thesis predicted by Condorcet's Jury Theorem either occurs almost surely or almost never. Notably, the prior probability of the theorem's thesis is zero. Moreover, under specific circumstances, the theorem's opposite outcome holds true, leading to the wrong option being chosen almost surely. Consequently, invoking this theorem necessitates further examination to better comprehend its applicability. An immediate issue for the jury theorem is the question of the selection of alternative options and how to guarantee that the correct option is offered to voters in the first place. It therefore seems to acquire another procedure which can effectively narrow down the options. Objections have also been made to the relevance of the main assumptions of the theorem to the political context, where voters often engage in debate with others, have different motivations for voting, and often confront complex political problems. Miracle of Aggregation: Like the jury theorem, the miracle of aggregation also appeals to the benefits of large numbers to defend democratic voting but focuses on the tendency of incorrect votes to cancel each other out. Those voters who are informed will tend to vote for the correct policy, while those who are ignorant will have to vote randomly. The votes of ignorant voters will therefore be distributed evenly among the available options. Once all votes are aggregated, the votes of bad voters will therefore cancel each other out, and the votes of informed voters will decide the outcome. A key assumption of this argument, however, is that those with none or little information will tend to vote randomly. It has therefore been objected that bad voters may in fact make systemic errors in a certain direction, and that their votes will not be completely cancelled out. An important question therefore concerns whether any systemic errors will be large enough to outnumber the more informed voters so as to influence the final outcome. In relation to the findings of the study mentioned for Jury Theorems, it has been established that even though, almost surely, at least a proportion of voters is well-informed or almost well-informed the Miracle of Aggregation (MoA) does not occur almost surely using a prior probability measure. Diversity Trumps Ability: The diversity trumps ability theorem was first developed by Lu Hong and Scott Page, but most prominently applied to epistemic democracy by Hélène Landemore. Unlike the previous two arguments which focused on voting, this argument applies to deliberation. According to the theorem, a random selection of cognitively diverse problem solvers can outperform a group of high ability problem solvers if four conditions are met. These are that: (1) the problem is difficult enough; (2) the problem solvers are relatively smart; (3) problem solvers think differently from each other but can still recognise the best solution; and (4) the population from which problem solvers are taken is large and the number selected is not too small. The idea behind the theorem is that a group of high ability individuals will tend to think in similar ways and will therefore converge on a common local optimum. A group of cognitively diverse problem solvers, alternatively, will think very differently and will therefore be able to guide one another past the local optima and to the global optimum. Landemore has then argued that the theorem supports the epistemic quality democratic deliberation involving citizens over the deliberation of any subset of the demos. The epistemic benefit of democratic deliberation is therefore its ability to draw on the cognitive diversity of the demos.   The application of the Diversity Trumps Ability theorem by Hong, Page, and Landemore in the context of epistemic democracy has been met with substantial skepticism from various quarters of the academic community. Among these skeptics, Thompson's critique stands out, asserting that the theorem's mathematical underpinnings do little more than dress up a rather trivial fact. This criticism posits that the theorem, despite its apparent mathematical rigor, may in fact offer nothing more than a formalized iteration of the preconceived hypotheses. The core of the contention is that the theorem's mathematical formulation serves to obscure rather than clarify the true, straightforward nature of the relationship between diversity and problem-solving efficacy. Further, the critics highlight that when the theorem is stripped of its mathematical trappings, it reveals its inherent triviality. It is suggested that the theorem's conditions and implications are so narrowly defined as to be unrealistic when applied to the workings of actual democratic deliberation. By reframing the theorem with more realistic assumptions, these analyses expose the limitations of the original claims, often concluding that, contrary to the theorem’s intentions, ability can indeed eclipse diversity. This rigorous scrutiny aims to demystify the purported complexity of the theorem, warning against its uncritical adoption in socio-political theories and advocating for a more discerning use of mathematics in the exploration of democratic processes. Many objections to the use of the diversity trumps ability theorem focus on assumption (3). Sometimes referred to as the oracle assumption, it requires that all problem solvers can recognise the best solution when made to think about it. Two challenges have confronted this assumption. The first is the issue of moral pluralism and the idea that participants may disagree on the best solution because they have different value commitments. The second is the issue of complexity and the idea that participants may disagree over the best solution, even if they agree on values, because political problems allow for multiple plausible interpretation. While the oracle assumption is therefore controversial, it has been argued that cognitive diversity may still have value even if all deliberators cannot recognise the best solution, although it becomes unclear in such cases whether such diversity will always trump ability.   Experimental Models: Experimental models are inspired by the work of John Dewey and were introduced into the contemporary debate by Elizabeth Anderson. Rather than rely on formal theorems as the previous arguments do, the experimental model instead sees the democratic institutions of regular elections as allowing for a process of trial-and-error learning. The idea is that when democratic governments enact a new policy, citizens will directly experience its results. Elections, petitions, and protests then give these citizens the opportunity to communicate their experiences back to policy makers, who can then use this information to reform the policy. Democratic procedures therefore offer important feedback mechanisms which allow policy makers to update and improve their policies over time. Anderson also argues that these procedures need to be inclusive so that all possible feedback can be considered. Differently situated citizens will have different experiences of social problems and public policies, and therefore an open and inclusive political process is required to make sure all of these distinctive contributions can be taken into account. One issue concerning this model is the quality of the feedback signals provided by democratic elections, their frequency, and the extent that they may be affected by such things as voter ignorance or irrationality. There has also been debate over the extent to which Anderson’s Dewey inspired model is consistent with Dewey’s own democratic theory.  Epistemic Deliberative Democracy: A range of related arguments for the epistemic value of democracy can be found in the work of deliberative democrats. Deliberative democracy refers to a conception of democratic politics which places emphasis on the importance of a free and open public discussion. As Simone Chambers puts it, such approaches are talk centric rather than vote centric. While many deliberative democrats see deliberation as intrinsically valuable, many also advocate deliberation based on its instrumental and epistemic benefits. For instance, deliberation has been argued to help achieve forms of rational agreement, to help improve people’s understanding of their own preferences and of social problems, and to improve citizen knowledge and beliefs. A large empirical literature has now developed which looks to test these claims and understand the conditions under which deliberation may produce such benefits. Reflexivity: Although not describing themselves as epistemic democrats, Jack Knight and James Johnson offer an alternative argument based on the concept of reflexivity. They distinguish between first-order institutions which aim to directly address social problems and second-order institutions which aim to coordinate and select between institutions at the first-order. The task of a second-order institution is therefore to coordinate ‘the ongoing process of selecting, implementing and maintaining effective institutional arrangements’, and sustaining an ‘experimental environment that can enhance our knowledge’ of when institutions produce good consequences Democracy is then said to have priority at the second-order because it operates in a reflexive manner. The reflexivity of democratic arrangements derives from the fact that they require ‘relevant parties to assert, defend, and revise their own views and to entertain, challenge, or accept those of others. It derives, in other words, from ongoing disagreement and conflict’. There has, however, been debate over whether democracy best provides this kind of reflexivity. Some authors, for instance, have claimed that reflexivity is more likely to be achieved by decentralised processes, such as system of polycentricity or markets. Alternatives to Democracy Given its aim of defending democracy on epistemic grounds, work on epistemic democracy is closely connected with work which advocates for alternative political institutions for epistemic reasons. In the contemporary debate, four alternatives or part alternatives have received most discussion. Epistocracy: Epistocracy refers to a political system based on ‘rule by the knowers’ rather than ‘rule by the people’. While the term was coined by David Estlund, its most prominent advocate has been Jason Brennan who suggests a range of alternative models of epistocracy. These include proposals for excluding the least knowledgeable voters from the electoral franchise, granting more informed voter more votes than other citizens, or the establishment of an epistocratic veto where a body of knowledgeable members would be able to veto any legislation coming from a democratically elected parliament. Brennan’s argument for epistocracy draws heavily on political science studies which are reported to show the political ignorance of many citizens. Based on such work, he argues that uninformed voters subject other members of society to an undue level of risk and therefore violate their supposed right to a competent government. Although we cannot assume a priori that the Condorcet Jury Theorem or the Miracle of Aggregation will hold true (see previous section), it has been proposed that by adding epistemic weights to the decision-making process, these theorems can indeed be upheld. By implementing a weighted majority rule based on stochastic weights correlated with epistemic rationality and guaranteeing a minimal weight equal to one for every voter, a more competent information aggregation mechanism can be achieved. This approach of incorporating epistemic weights while ensuring all votes count, albeit not in the same proportion, addresses potential concerns about disrespect or exclusion in the democratic process. By guaranteeing a minimal weight for every voter, the semiotic objections based on the expressive value of democracy are mitigated. In essence, this method strikes a balance between promoting competent decision-making and preserving the inclusive nature of the democratic process. Epistocrats have been subject to a range of critiques, however. They have been argued to offer an incomplete and overly pessimistic reading of the empirical literature on voter competence, to rely too heavily on rational choice theory, to not give significant attention to potential democratic reforms, and to underestimate the dangers involved in political exclusion and the empowerment of a knowledgeable minority. Political Meritocracy: Political meritocracy refers to a political system where leaders and officials are selected, at least in part, on their political abilities. Advocates of such systems, such as Daniel Bell and Tongdong Bai, argue that political leaders require intellectual and academic abilities, effective social skills and emotional intelligence, as well as ethical virtues. They should therefore ideally have exceptional academic qualifications, knowledge of the social sciences, records of good performance in government, and training in ethical philosophy. Political meritocrats then argue that elections are unlikely to select for these kinds of qualities and that political officials should therefore be appointed based on rigours processes of examination and their record of service at lower levels of government. These authors often look to China and Singapore as imperfect contemporary examples of political meritocracy, and commonly draw on Confucian philosophy in defending the value of meritocratic procedures. Political meritocracy has come under similar criticism to epistocracy, offering a too pessimistic account of voter competence, overestimating the ability of meritocratic procedures to select more able and virtuous leaders, and underestimating the dangers of removing democratic elections and leaving political officials unaccountable to the public. The claim that Confucian philosophy supports political meritocracy is also controversial with many authors defending versions of Confucian democracy. Political decentralisation: While epistocracy and political meritocracy may offer full alternatives to democracy, some critical of democracy’s epistemic value have instead argued for greater forms of decentralisation. Ilya Somin, for instance, argues that democratic voters have little incentive to become informed about political matters, as their one vote among thousands is very unlikely to affect the outcome. This is known as the problem of rational ignorance most associated with Anthony Downs. Somin therefore advocates for systems of political decentralisation, such as federalism, which would allow greater opportunities for exit. Unlike decisions on how to vote, decisions on which political jurisdiction to live in have significant consequences for individuals and therefore provide them with an incentive to get informed. While political decentralisation does not offer a complete alternative to democracy, it is thought to help increase the epistemic quality of government by supplementing mechanisms of voice with exit. Like supporters of epistocracy, however, Somin has been criticised for too greatly relying on rational choice models, for underestimating the competence of voters, and for underestimating the costs associated with exit. Markets: There is also a free-market tradition sceptical of the epistemic quality of democracy which is most often associated with Friedrich Hayek. Hayek argued that any centralised political authority could not possibly acquire all the knowledge relevant for effective social decisions. A key reason for this was the importance he placed on local forms of knowledge about the particular circumstances of time and space. This knowledge was argued to be only known to on-the-spot-individuals, to be open to change over time, and to often involve a tacit component. Hayek therefore claimed that the best way to utilise this dispersed information was not to attempt to centralise it to any government authority, but allow individuals to make the best use of their own information and rely on a system of market prices to coordinate their individual actions. Hayekian authors, such as Mark Pennington, have therefore argued that there are important epistemic advantages to systems based on price signals rather than voters and deliberation, and advocate for expanding the role of markets into otherwise political domains. These positions have been criticised on the basis that markets cannot provide many of the functions of democratic governments and on their optimistic view of the functioning of market institutions. Jonathan Benson has also argued that consumers often lack the kinds of information needed to make ethically informed decisions in the market place and that markets will often fail to achieve ethical values for epistemic reasons. Instead, he argues that ethical regulation is better provided by forms of political democracy which have a greater capacity to centralise relevant information, including local knowledge and tacit knowledge. Selected Bibliography A list of book-length works on or closely related to epistemic democracy: Bell, D. A. (2016). The China model: Political meritocracy and the limits of democracy. Princeton University Press. Brennan, J. (2016). Against Democracy. Princeton University Press. Brennan, J. and H. Landemore (2022). Debating democracy: do we need more or less?. Oxford University Press. Caplan, B. (2011). The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton University Press. Erikson, R. S., M. B. MacKuen and J. A. Stimson (2002). The Macro Polity. Cambridge University Press. Estlund, D. (2009). Democratic Authority: A philosophical framework. Princeton University Press. Fishkin, J. S. (2018). Democracy when the people are thinking: Revitalizing our politics through public deliberation. Oxford University Press. Goodin, R. E. and K. Spiekermann (2018). An Epistemic Theory of Democracy. Oxford University Press. Knight, J. and J. Johnson (2011). The Priority of Democracy: Political consequences of pragmatism, Princeton University Press. Landemore, H. (2013). Democratic Reason: Politics, collective intelligence, and the rule of the many. Princeton University Press. Misak, C. (2002). Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and deliberation, Routledge. Ober, J. (2008). Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and learning in classical Athens, Princeton University Press. Somin, I. (2016). Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why smaller government is smarter, Stanford University Press. Talisse, R. B. (2013). A pragmatist philosophy of democracy, Routledge. See also Collective intelligence Deliberative democracy Democracy Pragmatism Jury Theorem References Social epistemology Political theories Types of democracy

Democratic backsliding

Democratic backsliding is a process of regime change toward autocracy in which the exercise of political power becomes more arbitrary and repressive. The process typically restricts the space for public contest and political participation in the process of government selection. Democratic decline involves the weakening of democratic institutions, such as the peaceful transition of power or free and fair elections, or the violation of individual rights that underpin democracies, especially freedom of expression. Democratic backsliding is the opposite of democratization. Proposed causes of democratic backsliding include economic inequality, culturally conservative reactions to societal changes, populist or personalist politics, and external influence from great power politics. During crises, backsliding can occur when leaders impose autocratic rules during states of emergency that are either disproportionate to the severity of the crisis or remain in place after the situation has improved. During the Cold War, democratic backsliding occurred most frequently through coups. Since the end of the Cold War, democratic backsliding has occurred more frequently through the election of personalist leaders or parties who subsequently dismantle democratic instutions. During the third wave of democratization in the late twentieth century, many new, weakly institutionalized democracies were established; these regimes have been most vulnerable to democratic backsliding. The third wave of autocratization has been ongoing since 2010, when the number of liberal democracies was at an all-time high. Manifestations Democratic backsliding occurs when essential components of democracy are threatened. Examples of democratic backsliding include: Free and fair elections are degraded; Liberal rights of freedom of speech, press and association decline, impairing the ability of the political opposition to challenge the government, hold it to account, and propose alternatives to the current regime; The rule of law (i.e., judicial and bureaucratic restraints on the government) is weakened, such as when the independence of the judiciary is threatened, or when civil service tenure protections are weakened or eliminated. An over-emphasis on national security as response to acts of terrorism or perceived antagonists. Forms Democratic backsliding can occur in several common ways. Backsliding is often led by democratically elected leaders, who use "incremental rather than revolutionary" tactics. As emphasized by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, it is difficult to pinpoint a single specific moment at which a government is no longer democratic, given that this process of decline manifests "slowly, in barely visible steps". Ozan Varol uses the phrase stealth authoritarianism to describe the practice of an authoritarian leader (or a potential authoritarian leader) using "seemingly legitimate legal mechanisms for anti-democratic ends ... concealing anti-democratic practices under the mask of law." Together with Juan Linz (1996), Levitsky and Ziblatt developed and agreed upon their "litmus test", which includes what they believe to be the four key indicators of authoritarian behavior. These four factors are: rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the system, denial of the legitimacy of political opponents, toleration or encouragement of violence, and readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media. Varol describes the manipulation of libel laws, electoral laws, or "terrorism" laws as tools to target or discredit political opponents, and the employment of democratic rhetoric as a distraction from anti-democratic practices, as manifestations of stealth authoritarianism. In addition to these key signs derived from the behavior of leaders, Samuel P. Huntington also describes culture as a main contributor to democratic backsliding, and goes on to argue that certain cultures are particularly hostile to democracy, but they do not necessarily prohibit democratization. Fabio Wolkenstein also cautions that some measures taken to weaken democracy can shift or concentrate power in longer-lasting ways that may not be easily reversed in the next election. Promissory coups In a promissory coup, an incumbent elected government is deposed in a coup d'etat by coup leaders who claim to defend democracy and promise to hold elections to restore democracy. In these situations, coup-makers emphasize the temporary and necessary nature of their intervention to ensure democracy in the future. This is unlike the more open-ended coups that occurred during the Cold War. Political scientist Nancy Bermeo says that "The share of successful coups that falls into the promissory category has risen significantly, from 35 percent before 1990 to 85 percent afterward." Examining 12 promissory coups in democratic states between 1990 and 2012, Bermeo found that "Few promissory coups were followed quickly by competitive elections, and fewer still paved the way for improved democracies." Executive aggrandizement In political science, executive aggrandizement refers to the expansion of the leader's power beyond the "checks and balances" provided by the legislature and the judiciary, or by interfering with the independence of the public service. Even a legitimately elected leader can undermine democracy or cause a democratic backlash by using government resources to weaken his political opposition. This process contains a series of institutional changes by elected executives, impairing the ability of the political opposition to challenge the government and hold it to account. The most important feature of executive aggrandizement is that the institutional changes are made through legal channels, making it seem as if the elected official has a democratic mandate. Some examples of executive aggrandizement are the decline of media freedom and the weakening of the rule of law (i.e., judicial and bureaucratic restraints on the government), such as when judicial autonomy is threatened. Over time, there has been a decline in active coups (in which a power-seeking individual, or small group, seizes power through forcibly, violently removing an existing government) and self-coups (involving "a freely elected chief executive suspending the constitution outright in order to amass power in one swift sweep") and an increase in executive aggrandizement. Political scientist Nancy Bermeo notes that executive aggrandizement occurs over time, through institutional changes legitimized through legal means, such as new constituent assemblies, referendums, or "existing courts or legislatures ... in cases where supporters of the executive gain majority control of such bodies." Bermeo notes that these methods mean that the aggrandizement of the executive "can be framed as having resulted from a democratic mandate." Executive aggrandizement is characterized by the presence of distress in axes of democracy, including institutional or horizontal accountability; and executive or discursive accountability. Incremental election subversion This form of democratic backsliding entails the subversion of free and fair elections by, for example, blocking media access, disqualifying opposition candidates and voter suppression. This form of backsliding typically takes place before Election Day and now tends to be done in a slower and more incremental way that the changes may even seem not urgent to counter, making it tougher for watchdogs like the media to find and broadcast the cumulative threat of all the mostly small, but significant misconducts. While the accumulation of power is more likely to start with this slower linear progression, it can accelerate once voter power seems too divided or weakened to repair all the damage done to institutions. Causes and characteristics The V-Party Dataset demonstrates a greater statistical significance of autocratization for victorious parties with very high populism, high anti-pluralism, lack of commitment to the democratic process, acceptance of political violence, far-right culturally or far-left economic characteristics. Populism Pippa Norris of the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Sydney argues that the two "twin forces" pose the largest threat to Western liberal democracies: "sporadic and random terrorist attacks on domestic soil, which damage feelings of security, and the rise of populist-authoritarian forces, which feed parasitically upon these fears." Norris defines populism as "a governing style with three defining features": A rhetorical emphasis on the idea that "legitimate political authority is based on popular sovereignty and majority rule"; Disapproval of, and challenges to the legitimacy of, established holders of "political, cultural, and economic power"; Leadership by "maverick outsiders" who claim "to speak for the vox populi and to serve ordinary people." Some, but not all, populists are authoritarian, emphasizing "the importance of protecting traditional lifestyles against perceived threats from 'outsiders', even at the expense of civil liberties and minority rights." According to Norris, the reinforcement of the insecurities from the "twin forces" has led to more support for populist-authoritarian leaders, and this latter risk was especially pronounced in the United States during the presidency of Donald Trump. For example, Norris argues that Trump benefited from the mistrust of "the establishment" and that he continuously sought to undermine faith in the legitimacy of the media and the independence of the courts. In 2017, Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser wrote: Populism does not have the same effect in each stage of the democratization process. In fact, we suggest that populism tends to play a positive role in the promotion of electoral or minimal democracy, but a negative role when it comes to fostering the development of a full-fledged liberal democratic regime. Consequently, while populism tends to favor the democratization of authoritarian regimes, it is prone to diminish the quality of liberal democracies. Populism supports popular sovereignty, but it is inclined to oppose any limitations on majority rule, such as judicial independence and minority rights. Populism-in-power has led to processes of de-democratization (e.g., [Viktor] Orbán in Hungary or [Hugo] Chávez in Venezuela) and, in some extreme cases, even to the breakdown of the democratic regime (e.g., [Alberto] Fujimori in Peru). A 2018 analysis by political scientists Yascha Mounk and Jordan Kyle links populism to democratic backsliding, showing that since 1990, "13 right-wing populist governments have been elected; of these, five brought about significant democratic backsliding. Over the same time period, 15 left-wing populist governments were elected; of these, the same number, five, brought about significant democratic backsliding." A December 2018 report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change concluded that populist rule, whether left- or right-wing, leads to a significant risk of democratic backsliding. The authors examine the effect of populism on three major aspects of democracy: the quality of democracy in general, Checks and Balances on executive power and citizens' right to politically participate in a meaningful way. They conclude that populist governments are four times more likely to cause harm to democratic institutions than non-populist governments. Also, more than half of populist leaders have amended or rewritten the countries' constitution, frequently in a way that eroded checks and balances on executive power. Lastly, populists attack individual rights such as freedom of the press, civil liberties, and political rights. In a 2018 journal article on democratic backsliding, scholars Licia Cianetti, James Dawson, and Seán Hanley argued that the emergence of populist movements in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Andrej Babiš's ANO in the Czech Republic, are "a potentially ambiguous phenomenon, articulating genuine societal demands for political reform and pushing issues of good governance centre stage, but further loosening the weak checks and balances that characterise post-communist democracy and embedding private interests at the core of the state." In a 2019 paper, presented to the International Society of Political Psychologists, Shawn Rosenberg argues that right-wing populism is exposing a vulnerability in democratic structures and that "democracy is likely to devour itself." Around the world, citizens are voting away the democracies they claim to cherish. Scholars present evidence that this behaviour is driven in part by the belief that their opponents will undermine democracy first. In experimental studies, they revealed to partisans that their opponents are more committed to democratic norms than they think. As a result, the partisans became more committed to upholding democratic norms themselves and less willing to vote for candidates who break these norms. These findings suggest that aspiring autocrats may instigate democratic backsliding by accusing their opponents of subverting democracy and that we can foster democratic stability by informing partisans about the other side's commitment to democracy. The term "populism" has been criticized as a misleading term for phenomena such as nativism and intentional promotion of authoritarianism by political elites. Economic inequality and social discontent Many political economy scholars, such as Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, have investigated the effect of income inequality on the democratic breakdown. Studies of democratic collapse show that economic inequality is significantly higher in countries that eventually move towards a more authoritarian model. Hungary is an example of a country where a large group of unemployed, low-educated people were dissatisfied with the high levels of inequality, especially after the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Viktor Orbán used this dissatisfaction of a relatively large segment of the population to his advantage, winning popular support by using national-populist rhetoric. Personalism A 2019 study found that personalism had an adverse impact on democracy in Latin America: "presidents who dominate their own weakly organized parties are more likely to seek to concentrate power, undermine horizontal accountability, and trample the rule of law than presidents who preside over parties that have an independent leadership and an institutionalized bureaucracy." COVID-19 Many national governments worldwide delayed, postponed or canceled a variety of democratic elections at both national and subnational governmental levels resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic opening gaps in the action of democracy. According to the V-Dem Institute, only 39% of all countries have committed no or only minor violations of democratic standards in response to COVID-19. According to Ingo Keilitz, both authoritarian leaders and surveillance capitalists used the pandemic to "make massive shifts and reprogramming of our sensibilities about privacy and civil liberties that may not be reversible". Keilitz saw this as a threat to judicial independence. Great power politics Great power transitions have contributed to democratic backsliding and the spread of authoritarianism in two ways: "First, the sudden rise of autocratic Great Powers led to waves of autocracy driven by conquest but also by self-interest and even admiration, as in the fascist wave of the 1930s or the post-1945 communist wave. Second, the sudden rise of democratic hegemons led to waves of democratization, but these waves inevitably overextended and collapsed, leading to failed consolidation and rollback." Authoritarian values Global variation in democracy is primarily explained by variance between popular adherence to authoritarian values vs. emancipative values, which explains around 70 percent of the variation of democracy between countries every year since 1960. Emancipative values, as measured by the World Values Survey, have been consistently rising over time in response to increasing economic prosperity. A 2020 study, which used World Values Survey data, found that cultural conservatism was the ideological group most open to authoritarian governance within Western democracies. Within English-speaking Western democracies, "protection-based" attitudes combining cultural conservatism and leftist economic attitudes were the strongest predictor of support for authoritarian modes of governance. Professor Jessica Stern and the political psychologist Karen Stenner write that international research finds that "perceptions of sociocultural threat" (such as rising ethnic diversity, tolerance for LGBT people) are more important in explaining how democracies turn authoritarian compared to economic inequality (though they include economic threats such as globalization and the rising prosperity of other ethnic groups). Stern and Stenner say about a third of the population in Western countries is predisposed to favor homogeneity, obedience, and strong leaders over diversity and freedom. In their view, authoritarianism is only loosely correlated with conservatism, which may defend a liberal democracy as the status quo. Political scientist Christian Welzel argues that the third wave of democratization overshot the demand for democracy in some countries. Therefore, Welzel sees the current autocratization trend as regression to the mean, but expects that it too will reverse in response to long-term changes in values. Polarization, misinformation, incrementalism, and multi-factor explanations The 2019 Annual Democracy Report of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg identified three challenges confronting global democracy: (1) "Government manipulation of media, civil society, rule of law, and elections"; (2) rising "toxic polarization", including "the division of society into distrustful, antagonistic camps"; diminishing "respect for opponents, factual reasoning, and engagement with society" among political elites; and increasing use of hate speech by political leaders; and (3) foreign disinformation campaigns, primarily digital, and mostly affecting Taiwan, the United States, and former Soviet bloc nations such as Latvia. According to Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman, four characteristics have typically provided the conditions for democratic backsliding (alone or in combination): Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power. Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufman highlight three key causes of backsliding: "the pernicious effects of polarization; realignments of party systems that enable elected autocrats to gain legislative power; and the incremental nature of derogations, which divides oppositions and keeps them off balance." A 2022 study linked polarization to support for undemocratic politicians. Effects of judicial independence A 2011 study examined the effects of judicial independence in preventing democratic backsliding. The study, which analyzed 163 nations from 1960 to 2000, concluded that established independent judiciaries are successful at preventing democracies from drifting to authoritarianism, but that states with newly formed courts "are positively associated with regime collapses in both democracies and nondemocracies". Prevalence and trends A study by the V-Dem Democracy indices by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, which contains more than eighteen-million data points relevant to democracy, measuring 350 highly specific indicators across 174 countries as of the end of 2016, found that the number of democracies in the world modestly declined from 100 in 2011 to 97 in 2017; some countries moved toward democracy, while other countries moved away from democracy. V-Dem's 2019 Annual Democracy Report found that the trend of autocratization continued, while "24 countries are now severely affected by what is established as a 'third wave of autocratization including "populous countries such as Brazil, Bangladesh and the United States, as well as several Eastern European countries" (specifically Bulgaria and Serbia). The report found that an increasing proportion of the world population lived in countries undergoing autocratization (2.3 billion in 2018). The report found that while the majority of countries were democracies, the number of liberal democracies declined to 39 by 2018 (down from 44 a decade earlier). The research group Freedom House, in reports in 2017 and 2019, identified democratic backsliding in a variety of regions across the world. Freedom House's 2019 Freedom in the World report, titled Democracy in Retreat, showed freedom of expression declining each year over the preceding 13 years, with sharper drops since 2012. Scholarly work in the 2010s detailed democratic backsliding, in various forms and to various extents, in Hungary and Poland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Brazil, Venezuela, and India. The scholarly recognition of the concept of democratic backsliding reflects a reversal from older views, which held "that democracy, once attained in a fairly wealthy state, would become a permanent fixture." This older view came to be realized as erroneous beginning in the mid-2000s, as multiple scholars acknowledged that some seemingly-stable democracies have recently faced a decline in the quality of their democracy. Huq and Ginsburg identified in an academic paper "37 instances in 25 different countries in the postwar period in which democratic quality declined significantly (though a fully authoritarian regime didn't emerge)", including countries that were "seemingly stable, reasonably wealthy" democracies. The V-Dem Democracy Report identified for the year 2023 23 cases of stand-alone autocratization and 19 cases of bell-turn autocratization. The 2020 report of the Varieties of Democracy Institute found that the global share of democracies declined from 54% in 2009 to 49% in 2019, and that a greater share of the global population lived in autocratizing countries (6% in 2009, 34% in 2019). The 10 countries with the highest degree of democratizing from 2009 to 2019 were Tunisia, Armenia, The Gambia, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Myanmar, Fiji, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, and Niger; the 10 countries with the highest degree of autocratizing from 2009 to 2019 were Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Serbia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Mali, Thailand, Nicaragua, and Zambia. However, the institute found that signs of hope in an "unprecedented degree of mobilization for democracy" as reflected in increases in pro-democracy mass mobilization; the proportion of countries with "substantial pro-democracy mass protests" increased to 44% in 2019 (from 27% in 2009). According to a 2020 study, "Democratic backsliding does not necessarily see all democratic institutions erode in parallel fashion... we establish that elections are improving and rights are retracting in the same time period, and in many of the same cases." Democracy indices with varying democracy concepts and measurement approaches show different extents of recent global democracy decline. Central and Eastern Europe In the 2010s, a scholarly consensus developed that the Central and Eastern Europe region was experiencing democratic backsliding, most prominently in Hungary and Poland, and the European Union (EU) failed to prevent democratic backsliding in some of its other member states. Rutgers University political scientist R. Daniel Kelemen argues that EU membership has enabled an "authoritarian equilibrium" and may even make it easier for authoritarian-minded leaders to erode democracy due to the EU's system of party politics, a reluctance to interfere in domestic political matters; appropriation of EU funds by backsliding regimes; and free movement for dissatisfied citizens, which allows citizens to leave backsliding regimes and deplete the opposition while strengthening the regimes. According to a 2020 poll by Dalia Research, only 38 percent of Polish citizens and 36 percent of Hungarian citizens believed that their countries were democratic, while the rest said that they would like their countries to be more democratic. According to the Democracy Index, backsliding in Europe is most advanced in Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania. United States See also Declinism References Further reading Grillo, Edoardo; Luo, Zhaotian; Nalepa, Monika; Prato, Carlo (2024). "Theories of Democratic Backsliding". Annual Review of Political Science. Jee, Haemin; Lueders, Hans; Myrick, Rachel (2021). "Towards a unified approach to research on democratic backsliding". Democratization Knutsen, Carl Henrik; Marquardt, Kyle L.; Seim, Brigitte; Coppedge, Michael; Edgell, Amanda B.; Medzihorsky, Juraj; Pemstein, Daniel; Teorell, Jan; Gerring, John; Lindberg, Staffan I. (11 January 2024). "Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Assessing Democratic Backsliding". PS: Political Science & Politics. doi:10.1017/S104909652300077X. Przeworski, Adam. 2019. Crises of Democracy. Cambridge University Press. External links Democratic Erosion Consortium, a "partnership of researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners committed to marshaling evidence and learning to address the growing crisis of democratic erosion worldwide" Podcast: Democracy Paradox, hundreds of interviews with democracy experts around the world, including exploring democratic breakdowns Authoritarianism Democracy Human rights concepts Political science terminology Populism

Democratic transition

A democratic transition describes a phase in a country's political system as a result of an ongoing change from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. The process is known as democratisation, political changes moving in a democratic direction. Democratization waves have been linked to sudden shifts in the distribution of power among the great powers, which created openings and incentives to introduce sweeping domestic reforms. Although transitional regimes experience more civil unrest, they may be considered stable in a transitional phase for decades at a time. Since the end of the Cold War transitional regimes have become the most common form of government. Scholarly analysis of the decorative nature of democratic institutions concludes that the opposite democratic backsliding (autocratization), a transition to authoritarianism is the most prevalent basis of modern hybrid regimes. Typology Autocratization Democratisation Factors Decolonization Democratic globalization Democracy promotion Outcomes Democratic consolidation Stalled transition Hybrid regime Measurement See also Energy transition Anti-authoritarianism Types of democracy Peaceful transition of power Radical politics Transition economy List of freedom indices Notes References Further reading External links Democracy data: how do researchers measure democracy? -Our World in Data Democratic Transition publications - Jstor Mixed government Political systems Political terminology Economic systems

Decommodification

In political economy, decommodification is the strength of social entitlements and citizens' degree of immunization from market dependency. In regards to the labor force, decommodification describes a "degree to which individual, or families, can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living independently of market participation." While commodification is the transformation of goods, services, ideas and people into commodities or objects of trade, decommodification would be the "extent that workers can leave the labor market through choice." Contemporary research Gender inequality The idea of decommodification as an egalitarian concept as set forth by Esping Andersen sparked contemporary research efforts focusing on perceived inequities. In 2008, a research journal pointed out a feminist critique that "the absolute focus on the welfare of individuals who are already working" leaves a central bias in the pursuit of decommodification. Rather, the objective of women is often to be commodified in the first place so that they can enter the labor market. Environmental impact Decommodification has been identified by ecological economists as a strategy for sustainable consumption that acts one level up on the institutional context of consumption in Western societies as compared to strategies such as eco-efficiency and eco-sufficiency. Thus, while the eco-efficiency strategy targets the product and the eco-sufficiency strategy targets the person (the consumer as decision-maker), the decommodification strategy targets the institutional context in which consumption takes place. It aims to decrease the influence of commodities and to limit the effect of commercialization. Social democracy paradox Esping-Andersen's fundamental study of decommodification sparked contemporary academic research efforts hoping to resolve "paradoxes" in this application. Exiting the labor market with little or no loss of income clashed with the idea that social democracy has the goal of high labor force participation. Research efforts to resolve this paradox showed that "employment impeding policies" came out of Christian democracy institutions, not social democracy institutions. This research suggests that decommodification in the social democratic model is viable. Example Scandinavian countries are the closest to decommodification according to the scale created by Esping Andersen's research which places Sweden as the most decommodified country in the 1980s. Sweden's level of pensions, sickness entitlements and unemployment insurance are the highest among many other leading industrial countries. Sweden's social welfare programs are mandated by the government which also offers a de facto guarantee to the wages of citizens' rather than taking averages and creating regulations through a means-based test on citizens' wages, level of education and their past history with the law. Notes Political economy Social democratic concepts

Pluralism (political theory)

Classical pluralism is the view that politics and decision-making are located mostly in the framework of government but that many non-governmental groups use their resources to exert influence. The central question for classical pluralism is how power and influence are distributed in a political process. Groups of individuals try to maximize their interests. Lines of conflict are multiple and shifting as power is a continuous bargaining process between competing groups. There may be inequalities but they tend to be distributed and evened out by the various forms and distributions of resources throughout a population. Any change under this view will be slow and incremental, as groups have different interests and may act as "veto groups" to destroy legislation. The existence of diverse and competing interests is the basis for a democratic equilibrium, and is crucial for the obtaining of goals by individuals. A polyarchy—a situation of open competition for electoral support within a significant part of the adult population—ensures competition of group interests and relative equality. Pluralists stress civil rights, such as freedom of expression and organization, and an electoral system with at least two parties. On the other hand, since the participants in this process constitute only a tiny fraction of the populace, the public acts mainly as bystanders. This is not necessarily undesirable for two reasons: (1) it may be representative of a population content with the political happenings, or (2) political issues require continuous and expert attention, which the average citizen may not have. Important theorists of pluralism include Robert A. Dahl (who wrote the seminal pluralist work, Who Governs?), David Truman, and Seymour Martin Lipset. The Anti-Pluralism Index in V-Party Dataset is modeled as a lack of commitment to the democratic process, disrespect for fundamental minority rights, demonization of opponents, and acceptance of political violence. Pluralist conception of power The list of possible sources of power is virtually endless: legal authority, money, prestige, skill, knowledge, charisma, legitimacy, free time, and experience. Pluralists also stress the differences between potential and actual power as it stands. Actual power means the ability to compel someone to do something and is the view of power as a causation. Dahl describes power as a "realistic relationship, such as A's capacity for acting in such a manner as to control B's responses". Potential power refers to the possibility of turning resources into actual power. Cash, one of many resources, is only a stack of bills until it is put to work. Malcolm X, for example, was certainly not a rich person growing up, but received money from many groups after his prison term and used other resources such as his forceful personality and organizational skills. He had a greater impact on American politics than most wealthy people. A particular resource like money cannot automatically be equated with power because the resource can be used skillfully or clumsily, fully or partially, or not at all. Pluralists believe that social heterogeneity prevents any single group from gaining dominance. In their view, politics is essentially a matter of aggregating preferences. This means that coalitions are inherently unstable (Polsby, 1980), hence competition is easily preserved. In Dahl's view, because "political heterogeneity follows socioeconomic heterogeneity", social differentiation increasingly disperses power. In this case, Hamed Kazemzadeh (Canadian Pluralist and Human rights activist) argues that organizational membership socializes individuals to democratic norms, increases participation and moderates the politics of society so that bargaining and negotiation are possible. The pluralist approach to the study of power, states that nothing categorical about power can be assumed in any community. The question then is not who runs a community, but if any group in fact does. To determine this, pluralists study specific outcomes. The reason for this is that they believe human behavior is governed in large part by inertia. That said, actual involvement in overt activity is a more valid marker of leadership than simply a reputation. Pluralists also believe that there is no one particular issue or point in time at which any group must assert itself to stay true to its own expressed values, but rather that there are a variety of issues and points at which this is possible. There are also costs involved in taking action at all not only losing, but the expenditure of time and effort. While a structuralist may argue that power distributions have a rather permanent nature, this rationale says that power may in fact be tied to issues, which vary widely in duration. Also, instead of focusing on actors within a system, the emphasis is on the leadership roles itself. By studying these, it can be determined to what extent there is a power structure present in a society. Three of the major tenets of the pluralist school are (1) resources and hence potential power are widely scattered throughout society; (2) at least some resources are available to nearly everyone; and (3) at any time the amount of potential power exceeds the amount of actual power. Finally, and perhaps most important, no one is all-powerful unless proven so through empirical observation. An individual or group that is influential in one realm may be weak in another. Large military contractors certainly throw their weight around on defense matters, but how much sway do they have on agricultural or health policies? A measure of power, therefore, is its scope, or the range of areas where it is successfully applied as observed by a researcher. Pluralists believe that with few exceptions power holders usually have a relatively limited scope of influence. Pluralism does leave room for an elitist situation- Should group A continuously exert power over multiple groups. For a pluralist to accept this notion, it must be empirically observed and not assumed so by definition. For all these reasons power cannot be taken for granted. One has to observe it empirically in order to know who really governs. The best way to do this, pluralists believe, is to examine a wide range of specific decisions, noting who took which side and who ultimately won and lost. Only by keeping score on a variety of controversies can one begin to identify actual power holders. Pluralism was associated with behavioralism. A contradiction to pluralist power is often cited from the origin of one's power. Although certain groups may share power, people within those groups set agendas, decide issues, and take on leadership roles through their own qualities. Some theorists argue that these qualities cannot be transferred, thus creating a system where elitism still exists. What this theory fails to take into account is the prospect of overcoming these qualities by garnering support from other groups. By aggregating power with other organizations, interest groups can over-power these non-transferable qualities. In this sense, political pluralism still applies to these aspects. Elite pluralism Elite pluralists agree with classical pluralists that there is "plurality" of power; however, this plurality is not "pure" when the supposedly democratic equilibrium maintains or increases inequities (social, economic or political) due to elites holding greatly disproportionate societal power in forms aforementioned, or by systemic distortions of the political process itself, perpetuated by, for example, regulatory or cultural capture. Thus, with elite pluralism, it has been said that representative democracy is flawed, and tends to deteriorate towards particracy or oligarchy, by the iron law of oligarchy, for example.<ref>Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (1911, 1925; 1970). Translated as Sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna : studi sulle tendenze oligarchiche degli aggregati politici, from the German original by Dr. Alfredo Polledro, revised and expanded (1912). Translated, from the Italian, by Eden and Cedar Paul as Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy'" (Hearst's International Library Co., 1915; Free Press, 1949; Dover Publications, 1959); republished with an introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset (Crowell-Collier, 1962; Transaction Publishers, 1999, ); translated in French by S. Jankélévitch, Les partis politiques. Essai sur les tendances oligarchiques des démocraties, Brussels, Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2009</ref> Neo-pluralism While Pluralism as a political theory of the state and policy formation gained its most traction during the 1950s and 1960s in America, some scholars argued that the theory was too simplistic (see Connolly (1969) The Challenge to Pluralist Theory) leading to the formulation of neo-pluralism. Views differed about the division of power in democratic society. Although neo-pluralism sees multiple pressure groups competing over political influence, the political agenda is biased towards corporate power. Neo-pluralism no longer sees the state as an umpire mediating and adjudicating between the demands of different interest groups, but as a relatively autonomous actor (with different departments) that forges and looks after its own (sectional) interests. Constitutional rules, which in pluralism are embedded in a supportive political culture, should be seen in the context of a diverse, and not necessarily supportive, political culture and a system of radically uneven economic sources. This diverse culture exists because of an uneven distribution of socioeconomic power. This creates possibilities for some groups while limiting others in their political options. In the international realm, order is distorted by powerful multinational interests and dominant states, while in classical pluralism emphasis is put on stability by a framework of pluralist rules and free market society. Charles Lindblom Charles E. Lindblom, who is seen as positing a strong neo-pluralist argument, still attributed primacy to the competition between interest groups in the policy process but recognized the disproportionate influence business interests have in the policy process. Corporatism Classical pluralism was criticized as it did not seem to apply to Westminster-style democracies or the European context. This led to the development of corporatist theories. Corporatism is the idea that a few select interest groups are actually (often formally) involved in the policy formulation process, to the exclusion of the myriad other 'interest groups'. For example, trade unions and major sectoral business associations are often consulted about (if not the drivers of) specific policies. These policies often concern tripartite relations between workers, employers and the state, with a coordinating role for the latter. The state constructs a framework in which it can address the political and economic issues with these organized and centralized groups. In this view, parliament and party politics lose influence in the policy forming process. In foreign policy From the political aspect, 'pluralism' has a huge effect on the process and decision-making in formulating policy. In international security, during the policymaking process, different parties may have a chance to take part in decision making. The one who has more power, the more opportunity that it gains and the higher possibility to get what it wants. According to M. Frances (1991), "decision making appears to be a maze of influence and power." Democratization The V-Party Dataset demonstrates higher autocratization for high anti-pluralism. See also Agonism Decision-making Distributism Foreign policy Elite theory International relations Legitimation crisis Marxism New institutionalism Salad bowl (cultural idea) Notes References Ankerl Guy(2000) Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations. Geneva: INUPress. Socialstudieshelp.com, Pluralism. Accessed 13 February 2007. Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1960) The Semi-Sovereign People. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Gad Barzilai (2003) Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Polsby, Nelson W. (1960) How to Study Community Power: The Pluralist Alternative. The Journal of Politics, (22)3, 474–484 William E. Connolly: The Ethos of Pluralization''. University of Minnesota Press, 1995. C. Alden (2011). Foreign policy analysis. London: University of London. H. Kazemzadeh (2020). Democratic platform in Social Pluralism. Internal Journal of ACPCS, Winter No.10 pp. 237–253. M. Frances Klein (1991). The Politics of Curriculum Decision-Making: Issues in Centralizing the Curriculum. New York: SUNY Press. Comparative politics Political science theories Power sharing az:Siyasi plüralizm ca:Pluralisme polític cs:Pluralismus (politická teorie) cy:Lluosogaeth wleidyddol de:Pluralismus (Politik) fr:Pluralisme hr:Pluralizam (politika) lt:Pliuralizmas (tarptautiniai santykiai) ja:多元論 pt:Pluralismo (política) ru:Политический плюрализм simple:Pluralism sh:Pluralizam fi:Pluralismi (yhteiskuntatieteet)

Ethnocracy

An ethnocracy is a type of political structure in which the state apparatus is controlled by a dominant ethnic group (or groups) to further its interests, power, dominance, and resources. Ethnocratic regimes in the modern era typically display a 'thin' democratic façade covering a more profound ethnic structure, in which ethnicity (race, religion, language etc) – and not citizenship – is the key to securing power and resources. An ethnocratic society facilitates the ethnicization of the state by the dominant group, through the expansion of control likely accompanied by conflict with minorities or neighbouring states. A theory of ethnocratic regimes was developed by critical geographer Oren Yiftachel during the 1990s and later developed by a range of international scholars. Characteristics, structure, and dynamics In the 20th century, a few states passed (or attempted to pass) nationality laws through efforts that share certain similarities. All took place in countries with at least one national minority that sought full equality in the state or in a territory that had become part of the state and in which it had lived for generations. Nationality laws were passed in societies that felt threatened by these minorities' aspirations of integration and demands for equality, resulting in regimes that turned xenophobia into major tropes. These laws were grounded in one ethnic identity, defined in contrast to the identity of the other, leading to persecution of and codified discrimination against minorities. Research shows that several spheres of control are vital for ethnocratic regimes, including of the armed forces, police, land administration, immigration and economic development. These powerful government instruments may ensure domination by the leading ethnic groups and the stratification of society into 'ethnoclasses' (exacerbated by 20th century capitalism's typically neo-liberal policies). Ethnocracies often manage to contain ethnic conflict in the short term by effective control over minorities and by effectively using the 'thin' procedural democratic façade. However, they tend to become unstable in the longer term, suffering from repeated conflict and crisis, which are resolved by either substantive democratization, partition, or regime devolution into consociational arrangements. Alternatively, ethnocracies that do not resolve their internal conflict may deteriorate into periods of long-term internal strife and the institutionalization of structural discrimination (such as apartheid). In ethnocratic states, the government is typically representative of a particular ethnic group, which holds a disproportionately large number of posts. The dominant ethnic group (or groups) uses them to advance the position of their particular ethnic group(s) to the detriment of others. Other ethnic groups are systematically discriminated against and may face repression or violations of their human rights at the hands of state organs. Ethnocracy can also be a political regime instituted on the basis of qualified rights to citizenship, with ethnic affiliation (defined in terms of race, descent, religion, or language) as the distinguishing principle. Generally, the of an ethnocratic government is to secure the most important instruments of state power in the hands of a specific ethnic collectivity. All other considerations concerning the distribution of power are ultimately subordinated to this basic intention. Ethnocracies are characterized by their control system – the legal, institutional, and physical instruments of power deemed necessary to secure ethnic dominance. The degree of system discrimination will tend to vary greatly from case to case and from situation to situation. If the dominant group (whose interests the system is meant to serve and whose identity it is meant to represent) constitutes a small minority (typically 20% or less) of the population within the state territory, substantial institutionalized suppression will probably be necessary to sustain its control. Means of avoiding ethnocracy One view is that the most effective means of eliminating ethnic discrimination vary depending on the specific situation. In the Caribbean, a "rainbow nationalism" type of non-ethnic, inclusive civic nationalism has been developed as a way to eliminate ethnic power hierarchies over time. (Although Creole peoples are central in the Caribbean, Eric Kauffman warns against conflating the presence of a dominant ethnicity in such countries with ethnic nationalism.) Andreas Wimmler notes that a non-ethnic federal system without minority rights has helped Switzerland to avoid ethnocracy but that this did not help in overcoming ethnic discrimination when introduced in Bolivia. Likewise, ethnic federalism "produced benign results in India and Canada" but did not work in Nigeria and Ethiopia. Edward E. Telles notes that anti-discrimination legislation may not work as well in Brazil as in the U.S. at addressing ethnoracial inequalities, since much of the discrimination that occurs in Brazil is class-based, and Brazilian judges and police often ignore laws that are intended to benefit non-elites. Mono-ethnocracy vs. poly-ethnocracy In October 2012, Lise Morjé Howard introduced the terms mono-ethnocracy and poly-ethnocracy. Mono-ethnocracy is a type of regime where one ethnic group dominates, which conforms with the traditional understanding of ethnocracy. Poly-ethnocracy is a type of regime where more than one ethnic group governs the state. Both mono- and poly-ethnocracy are types of ethnocracy. Ethnocracy is founded on the assumptions that ethnic groups are primordial, ethnicity is the basis of political identity, and citizens rarely sustain multiple ethnic identities. Ethnocracies around the world Belgium Lise Morjé Howard has labeled Belgium as both a poly-ethnocracy and a democracy. Citizens in Belgium exercise political rights found in democracies, such as voting and free speech. However, Belgian politics is increasingly defined by ethnic divisions between the Flemish and Francophone communities. For example, all the major political parties are formed around either a Flemish or Francophone identity. Furthermore, bilingual education has disappeared from most Francophone schools. Malaysia Malaysia has been labeled as a pro-Bumiputera/Malay ethnocracy by various academics due to the Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia, as well as the Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy) ideology, which gives them more economic, political and social rights over the Malaysian minorities such as the Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians, who are treated as de facto second-class citizens. Israel Israel has been labeled an ethnocracy by scholars such as Alexander Kedar, Shlomo Sand, Oren Yiftachel, Asaad Ghanem, Haim Yakobi, Nur Masalha and Hannah Naveh. It is also viewed as an apartheid state by various organisations, including B'Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, due to actions committed against Palestinians that they see as emblematic of such a state. However, scholars such as Gershon Shafir, Yoav Peled and Sammy Smooha prefer the term ethnic democracy to describe Israel, which is intended to represent a "middle ground" between an ethnocracy and a liberal democracy. Smooha in particular argues that ethnocratic democracies, allowing a privileged status to a dominant ethnic majority while ensuring that all individuals have equal rights, are defensible. His opponents reply that insofar as Israel contravenes equality in practice, the term 'democratic' in his equation is flawed. In 2018, Israel passed the Nation-State Bill which declared that "The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people." The law also removed the official status of Arabic, with Hebrew remaining the sole official language of Israel. Latvia and Estonia There is a spectrum of opinion among authors as to the classification of Latvia and Estonia, spanning from liberal democracy through ethnic democracy to ethnocracy. Will Kymlicka regards Estonia as a democracy, stressing the peculiar status of Russian-speakers as stemming from being at once partly transients, partly immigrants and partly natives. British researcher Neil Melvin concludes that Estonia is moving towards a genuinely pluralist democratic society through its liberalization of citizenship and actively drawing of leaders of the Russian settler communities into the political process. James Hughes, in the United Nations Development Programme's Development and Transition, contends Latvia and Estonia are cases of 'ethnic democracy', where the state has been captured by the titular ethnic group and then used to promote 'nationalising' policies and alleged discrimination against Russophone minorities. (Development and Transition has also published papers disputing Hughes' contentions.) Israeli researchers Oren Yiftachel and As'ad Ghanem consider Estonia an ethnocracy. Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha, of the University of Haifa, disagrees with Yiftachel, contending that the ethnocratic model developed by Yiftachel does not fit the case of Latvia and Estonia: they are not settler societies as their core ethnic groups are indigenous, nor did they expand territorially, nor have diasporas intervening in their internal affairs (as in the case of Israel for which Yiftachel originally developed his model). Northern Ireland Northern Ireland has been described as an ethnocracy by numerous scholars. Wendy Pullan describes gerrymandering of electoral districts to ensure Unionist domination and informal policies that led to the police force being overwhelmingly Protestant as features of the Unionist ethnocracy. Other elements included discriminatory housing and policies designed to encourage Catholic emigration. Ian Shuttleworth, Myles Gould and Paul Barr agree that the systematic bias against Catholics and Irish nationalists fit the criteria for describing Northern Ireland as an ethnocracy from the time of the partition of Ireland until at least 1972, but argue that after the suspension of the Stormont Parliament, and even more so after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, ethnocracy was weakened, and that Northern Ireland cannot be plausibly described as an ethnocracy today. Rwanda According to academic Alana Tiemessen in 2004, Rwanda's president Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front political party have "been characterised inside and outside of Rwanda as a militarised ethnocracy that propagates the survival of Tutsis over the well-being of Hutus". In 2024, The New York Times noted that critics contended that members of the Tutsi ethnic group "dominate[d] the top echelons" of Rwanda's government under Kagame, thereby excluding Hutus and their 85% of the country's population. Prior to the 1990–1994 Rwanda Civil War and 1994 Rwandan genocide, Rwanda had been ruled by a Hutu ethnocracy since 1959. South Africa Until 1994, South Africa had institutionalized a highly ethnocratic state structure, apartheid. In his 1985 book Power-Sharing in South Africa, Arend Lijphart classified contemporaneous constitutional proposals to address the resulting conflict into four categories: majoritarian (one man, one vote) non-democratic (varieties of white domination) partitionist (creating new political entities) consociational (power-sharing by proportional representation and elite accommodation) These illustrate the idea that state power can be distributed along two dimensions: legal-institutional and territorial. Along the legal-institutional dimension are singularism (power centralised according to membership in a specific group), pluralism (power distribution among defined groups according to relative numerical strength), and universalism (power distribution without any group-specific qualifications). On the territorial dimension are the unitary state, "intermediate restructuring" (within one formal sovereignty), and partition (creating separate political entities). Lijphart had argued strongly in favour of the consociational model. Turkey Turkey has been described as an ethnocracy by Bilge Azgın. Azgın points to government policies whose goals are the "exclusion, marginalization, or assimilation" of minority groups that are non-Turkish as the defining elements of Turkish ethnocracy. Israeli researcher As'ad Ghanem also considers Turkey an ethnocracy, while Jack Fong describes Turkey's policy of referring to its Kurdish minority as "mountain Turks" and its refusal to acknowledge any separate Kurdish identity as elements of the Turkish ethnocracy. Uganda Uganda under dictator Idi Amin Dada has also been described as an ethnocracy favouring certain indigenous groups over others, as well as for the ethnic cleansing of Indians in Uganda by Amin. See also Dominant minority Ethnic nationalism Herrenvolk democracy Human rights in Estonia Ketuanan Melayu Nationalism South Africa under apartheid Superstratum White separatism White nationalism Monoethnicity References Ethnic conflict Ethnicity in politics Politics and race Ethnic nationalism Ethnic supremacy Minority rights

Consensus democracy

Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision-making and supermajority to the process of legislation in a democracy. It is characterized by a decision-making structure that involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to majoritarian democracy systems where minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote-winning majorities. Constitutions typically require consensus or supermajority. A consensus government is a national unity government with representation across the whole political spectrum. A concordance democracy is a type of consensus democracy where majority rule does not play a central role. Optional referendums and popular initiatives correspond to consensus democracy. Examples Consensus democracy is most closely embodied in certain countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Lebanon, Sweden, Iraq, and Belgium, where consensus is an important feature of political culture, particularly with a view to preventing the domination of one linguistic or cultural group in the political process. The term consociational state is used in political science to describe countries with such consensus based political systems. An example of such a system could be the Dutch Poldermodel. Many parties in Lebanon call for applying consensus democracy, especially at times of crisis. Tripartism applies consensus democracy to economic policy by fostering social dialogue between opposing interest groups, primarily national trade unions and employers' organizations. Consensus government chiefly arises in non-partisan democracies and similar systems in which a majority of politicians are independent. Many former British territories with large indigenous populations use consensus government to fuse traditional tribal leadership with the Westminster system. Consensus government in Canada is used in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, as well as the autonomous Nunatsiavut region, and similar systems have arisen in the Pacific island nations of Fiji, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, as well as the ancient Tynwald of the Isle of Man. Electoral systems The Borda count tends to elect broadly-acceptable options or candidates (rather than consistently following the preferences of a majority). See also Anticipatory democracy Bioregional democracy Coalition government Consensus decision-making Consociationalism Types of democracy Direct democracy Grassroots democracy Hung parliament List of politics-related topics Minoritarianism Open source governance References External links Consensus Democracy: A New Approach to 21st Century Governance Metagovernment - Project using the wiki consensus model as a replacement for current governments. On Conflict and Consensus - A Handbook on Formal Consensus Decisionmaking. Consensus voting, the Modified Borda Count (MBC) Comparative politics Participatory democracy Types of democracy Power sharing

Political socialization

Political socialization is the process by which individuals internalize and develop their political values, ideas, attitudes, and perceptions via the agents of socialization. Political socialization occurs through processes of socialization, that can be structured as primary and secondary socialization. Primary socialization agents include the family, whereas secondary socialization refers to agents outside the family. Agents such as family, education, media, and peers influence the most in establishing varying political lenses that frame one's perception of political values, ideas, and attitudes. These perceptions, in turn, shape and define individuals' definitions of who they are and how they should behave in the political and economic institutions in which they live. This learning process shapes perceptions that influence which norms, behaviors, values, opinions, morals, and priorities will ultimately shape their political ideology: it is a "study of the developmental processes by which people of all ages and adolescents acquire political cognition, attitudes, and behaviors." These agents expose individuals through varying degrees of influence, inducing them into the political culture and their orientations towards political objects. Throughout a lifetime, these experiences influence your political identity and shape your political outlook. Agents of socialization Agents of socialization, sometimes called institutions, work together to influence and shape people's political norms and values. In the case of political socialization, the most significant agents include, but are not limited to, families, media, education, and peers. Other agents include religion, the state, and community. These agents shape your understanding of politics by exposing you to political ideas, values, and behaviors. Family Across the decades, literature has heavily emphasized that the agent of the family is the most influential, with literature suggesting that family and the transmission of attitudes from parent to child are the most prominent agents of socialization. This claim has found especially strong support for the transmission of voting behaviour, partisanship and religious attitudes. Especially in contexts of high politization and homogeneity in political views, transmissions are argued to be higher. Literature examines how aspects of family structures and dynamics change the varying influence of the offspring's values as a function of the distribution of their parent's attitudes. Families perpetuate values that support political authorities and can heavily contribute to children's initial political ideological views, or party affiliations. Literature suggest that the transmission of intergenerational political attitudes shows a strong lineage concerning their parents and siblings. Families have an effect on "political knowledge, identification, efficacy, and participation", depending on variables such as "family demographics, life cycle, parenting style, parental level of political cynicism", interest and politization, and "frequency of political discussions", as well as the saliency of the issues that are being discussed. Parents: Earliest literature of the influence of parents suggests that the varying ways parents raise their children become a significant catalyst in influencing their political attitudes, and behaviour. However, the initial view of parent-youth political socialisations studies of the simple inheritance of partisan views from parents to their children has been challenged by various studies, arguing that while the family still plays an important role in the political orientation of their offspring, the intensity is reduced over time and also taking other influential aspects into account. The most frequently found correlation of intergenerational transmission between parents and their children is partisanship and religious beliefs. What has been found is that especially salient and frequently discussed topics are more likely to transmit, and stronger transmissions occur in highly politicised households with homogenous views on political issues. It is further argued that the different methods of raising a child result in the child establishing formative values about all aspects of one's social life, such as religion and cultural traditions. . Especially the parenting style has been argued to be influential, with nurturant parenting resulting in more liberal views, and strict parenting promoting conservatism. This is argued to be due to a state-family heuristic, which assumes that complex phenomena such as politics and the state- society-relationship are understood from what we know from parent-child dynamics. In turn, suggesting that approaching social institutions in this context is vital as they bring a primary influence as opposed to economic or more formative organizations. Literature also suggest that predjudice influence from parents was found to be more influential towards political attitudes rather than economic and social stratification. Ultimately, literature has found it significant in studying the transmission of attitudes from parent to child as parents are generally more conservative, commonly associated with traditional attitudes and pushing towards continuity, opposite of their offspring. Siblings: The composition of the household in terms of the sex of the siblings has been argued to influence boys in becoming more or less conservative. What has been suggested is that for boys, having sisters influences them to develop more conservative views on gender roles and partisanship. This has been argued to be caused by a different approach to child raising and the division of household chores that varies in families depending if there are sons and daughters, or just sons. Therefore, if brothers do have sisters, they are less likely to be exposed to traditionally feminized household chores, wherefore they might adopt this view on gender roles and in turn also hold more traditional views in politics. Furthermore, literature suggests that children and adolescents are far more successfully socialized with cohort-centric attitudes with siblings close in age. Thus, this cohort-centric difference of multiple generations within the family with parents and siblings supports the idea that siblings who share the core agents of familial socialization develop coherent political attitudes. Linkage to the transmission of political attitudes via siblings include social trust and civic engagement. Media Mass media is not only a source of political information; it is an influence on political values and beliefs. The culmination of information gained from entertainment becomes the values and standards by which people judge. Most people choose what media they are exposed to based on their already existing values, and they use information from the media to reaffirm what they already believe. From news coverage and late-night programs, to exposure to social media apps, present varying political stances that are often associated with increasing political participation. However literature suggests that media coverage increasingly motivates users to delve into politics, as media outlets are leaning toward what stories will get them more views and engagement.  In turn, suggesting that having more political motives and financial motives presents more partisanship polarization if it means they will have an increase in viewership. These reinforced segments that bring more viewership have been proven to be more likely for individuals to rewatch or pay for reinforcing congruent evidence. Suggesting that reinforced media segments become confirmatory evidence that continuously polarizes biased political information.  This has become the perfect environment to enhance partisan polarization among voters through national outlets that reinforce extremist positions. These extremist positions have consistently found their way into partisan positions that have moved both parties towards supporting more extremist values, increasing mass partisan polarization. Ultimately, however, the common core of information, and the interpretation the media applies to it, leads to a shared knowledge and basic values throughout a given entity. Most media entertainment and information does not vary much throughout the country, and it is consumed by all types of audiences. Although there are still disagreements and different political beliefs and party affiliations, generally there are not huge ideological disparities among the population because the media helps create a broad consensus on basic US democratic principles.Overall, the increase in the media market demand for viewership has encouraged more polarized political discourse, and with advancing technologies, our dependency on the Internet and the media's vulnerability will only continue increasing. In turn, making it more vital in addressing the threat misinformation holds to the integrity of democracy. Print Media: In the case of print media, it is the oldest form of political socialization of media, as this includes books and poems. and newspapers. Until 1900, after the invention of radio, print media was the primary way individuals received information that shaped their political attitudes and beliefs. Studies show two-thirds of newspaper readers do not know their newspaper's position on specific issues- and most media stories are quickly forgotten. Older people read more newspapers than younger people, and people from the ages of twelve to seventeen (although they consume the most media) consume the least amount of news. Broadcast Media: Media influence in political socialization continues with both fictional and factual media sources. Adults have increased exposure to news and political information embedded in entertainment; fictional entertainment (mostly television) is the most common source of political information. The most common form of broadcast media is television and radio, increasing attention to politics as people become more informed with information and beliefs shaping political attitudes. Studies on public opinion of the Bush administration's energy policies show that the public pays more attention to issues that receive a lot of media coverage and form collective opinions about these issues. This demonstrates that the mass media's attention to an issue affects public opinion. More so, extensive exposure to television has led to "mainstreaming," aligning people's perception of political life and society with television's portrayal of it. Digital Media: Digital media, such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitch, accounted for viewership rates of 27.9 billion hours in 2020. examples of digital media include content created, distributed, and viewed on a given platform that one views from a digital electronic device. In turn, increases political polarization, with the recommended algorithms that confine users to echo chambers and content they agree with and enjoy while also increasing their political polarization. Social Media: The role of social media in political socialization, from scrolling on TikTok to checking the trending page on Twitter, has increasingly become powerful in presenting news and varying political perspectives. This shows political socialization at the palm of your hand with the constant production of new content, bringing a new variable in its infancy and shaping how people establish their political beliefs. The media has significantly increased the number of users who cover relevant political information, increasing exposure to political discourse. These platforms have created the perfect environment for individuals to be presented with and reinforce their beliefs through the advancing programming of echo chambers. Algorithms are increasingly confining users in a cycle of content-related videos. This gives media outlets an increasing power to manipulate biased presented news as supporting evidence to a partisan issue, reinforcing confirmatory information to potential false realities shaped by misinformation. Exposure to political accountability through the media motivates increasing polarization as it exposes how potential candidates stand on a given issue. Education In the numerous years in school, through primary, secondary, and high schools, students are taught vital political principles such as voting, elected representatives, individual rights, personal responsibility, and the political history of their state and country. There is also evidence that education is a significant factor in establishing political attitudes during the crucial period of adolescence, with three central themes examining how civic courses, teachers, and peer groups often provide alternative perspectives to their parent's political attitudes. In turn, identifying that civic influences towards change in an educational setting are vital in establishing generational political differences during socialization during adolescence. Other literature has found that involvement with high school activities provides adolescents with direct experience with political and civic engagement and implementing activist orientations toward one's attitudes with increased political discourse. Religion Religious beliefs and practices influence political opinions, priorities, and political participation. The theological and moral perspectives offered by religious institutions shape judgment regarding political attitudes and, ultimately, translate to direct influence on political matters such as "the redistribution of wealth, equality, tolerance for deviance, individual freedom, the severity of criminal punishment, policies relating to family structure, gender roles, abortion, anti-gay rhetoric, and the value of human life." The State State governments can control mass media to "inform, misinform, or misinform the press and thus the public '', a strategy referred to as propaganda. The ability to control agents of socialization, such as the media, brings control to the state to serve a political, economic, or personal agenda that benefits the state. Community Community mobilization brings significant experiences of political socialization events that could influence one's political attitudes with a collective community goal. An example is how Prop 187 was specifically targeting illegal immigrants in LA County within the state of California. Given the severity of the policy targeting a specific community, this created a mass mobilization of the Latino and immigrant community, creating a voting bloc that prevented the initiative of Prop 187. Harvey Milk was a significant political mobilizing the queer community during the 1978 race for California governor with increasing support for Prop 6, a law that would mandate firing any queer teacher or employee in any California public school. As this threatened the queer community and increased immigration of gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals, specifically in the San Francisco area, Milk was able to mobilize the queer community to gain enough momentum to vote against Prop 6 successfully. This could have been a pivotal introduction to political participation for those in these areas, motivating many to continue voting in future elections. In many cases, the experience of community mobilization is the first introduction to political policies and political participation, starting their political journey connected with their home. Region Geographical location also plays a role in one's political media socialization. For example, news outlets on the East Coast tend to cover international affairs in Europe and the Middle East the most, while West Coast news outlets are more likely to cover Asian affairs; this demonstrates that community region affects patterns in political socialization. The region is also significant for specific political attitudes. Living near the Pakistan-India border, an individual will likely have solid political attitudes toward the Pakistan-India tension. Given the socialization of their parents, cousins, grandparents, peers, and education, all have a significant role in teaching their youth about the relationship one has with the other state. Suppose one immigrated from Cuba to the United States. In that case, they will be the political socialization inclination to obtain conservative attitudes in the United States because of the regional movements from a leftist government in Cuba. Life Stages of Political Socialization Childhood Political socialization begins in childhood. It has been found that family is the first main influence, and following social circles are often chosen based on these initial views. Therefore, views are assumed to persist. Research suggest that family and educational environment are the most influential factors in socializing children. In terms of family, in early childhood, indirect exposure, such as parenting styles, or sibling composition might be more relevant, than direct political discussions. However recent literature suggest that increasing influence is coming from mass media such as digital and social media. On average, both young children and teenagers in the United States spend more time a week consuming television and digital media than they spend in school. Young children consume an average of thirty-one hours a week, while teenagers consume forty-eight hours of media a week. Given that childhood is when a human is the most impressionable the influential of agents of socialization is significant as children's brains are "prime for learning", thus more likely to take messages of political attitudes of the world at face value. Adolescence With media influence carrying into adolescence, high school students attribute the information that forms their opinions and attitudes about race, war, economics, and patriotism to mass media much more than their friends, family, or teachers. Other literature suggests that political identification and political participation often stem from values and attitudes attained during one's adolescence. The literature argues that pre-adult socialization in both childhood and adolescence has a longstanding and stable catalyzing influence from political events. This political socialization of these catalytic events establishes predispositions that are often felt by mass and collective political socialization. Literature also suggests that adult political participation shows a longitudinal influence from adolescent forces of political socialization, with three models assessing the effects of parental influence in the context of socioeconomic status, political activity, and civic orientation. A decade later, this literature observed a longitudinal impact of socialization that stems from adolescent political socialization. Literature found that parents' socioeconomic status and high school activities impact the most, although the family is an important and stable agent of socialisation, especially if views and stances are consistent, stable, clear, salient and frequently communicated, which favours higher transmission rates. Primary carriers of pre-adult political socialization play a crucial role in later political participation, with the parent political participation model contributing to an understanding of political activity. This literature suggests that political socialization during the adolescent period significantly influences political participation and voting behavior. It is argued that views persist when the initial socialisation in the family has been strong, hence views have been strongly formed when the adolescents enter adulthood. Adulthood While political socialization is lifelong process, after adolescence, people's basic values generally do not change. Most people choose what content they are exposed to based on their already existing values, and they use information from a favorable source to simply reaffirm what they already believe. Internal outcomes during adulthood can have far more significant development if these beliefs remain constant over time, especially if an attitude is present for the remainderdisambiguated of one's adolescence, the odds of that belief being consistent during adulthood are very likely. See also Agency (sociology) Cohort effect Groupthink Political culture Political cognition Public opinion References Socialization Socialization

Workplace democracy

Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in various forms to the workplace, such as voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, and systems of appeal. It can be implemented in a variety of ways, depending on the size, culture, and other variables of an organization. Theory Economic argument From as early as the 1920s, scholars have been exploring the idea of increasing employee participation and involvement. They sought to learn whether including employees in organizational decision-making would lead to increased effectiveness and productivity within the organization. According to Lewin, individuals who are involved in decision-making also have increased openness to change. Different participative techniques can have either a stronger impact on morale than productivity, while others have the reverse effect. Success of the employee-owned and operated Mondragon suggests economic benefits from workplace democracy. Citizenship argument Workplace democracy may encourage public participation in a government's political process. Skills developed from democracy in the workplace can transfer to improved citizenship and result in a better functioning democracy. Workers in a democratic environment may also develop a greater concern for the common good, which also transfers to fundamental citizenship. Ethical justification Philosopher Robert Dahl claims that, "If democracy is justified in governing the state, it must also be justified in governing economic enterprises." Some political scientists have questioned whether the state-firm analogy is the most appropriate way to justify workplace democratization. Employee power and representation Workers working for democratic leaders report positive results such as group member satisfaction, friendliness, group mindedness, 'we' statements, worker motivation, creativity, and dedication to decisions made within an organization. When workplace democracy is used the effect typically is raised employee potential, employee representation, higher autonomy, and equal power within an organization (Rolfsen, 2011). Political association Workplace democracy theory closely follows political democracy, especially in larger workplaces. Democratic workplace organization is often associated with trade unions, anarchist, and socialist (especially libertarian socialist) movements. Most unions have democratic structures at least for selecting the leader, and sometimes these are seen as providing the only democratic aspects to the workplace. Not every workplace that lacks a union lacks democracy, and not every workplace that has a union necessarily has a democratic way to resolve disputes. Historically, some unions have been more committed to workplace democracy than others. The Industrial Workers of the World pioneered the archetypal workplace democracy model, the Wobbly Shop, in which recallable delegates were elected by workers, and other norms of grassroots democracy were applied. This is still used in some organizations, notably Semco and in the software industry. Spanish anarchists, Mohandas Gandhi's Swadeshi movement, and farm and retail co-operative movements, all made contributions to the theory and practice of workplace democracy and often carried that into the political arena as a "more participatory democracy." The Green parties worldwide have adopted workplace democracy as a central platform, and also often mimic workplace democracy norms such as gender equity, co-leadership, deliberative democracy applied to any major decision, and leaders who don't do policy. The democratic socialist parties have supported the notion of workplace democracy and democratically controlled institutions. The best known and most studied example of a successfully democratic national labor union in the United States are the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, known throughout the labor movement as the UE. An independent trade Union, the UE was built from the bottom-up, and takes pride in its motto that "The Members Run This Union!" The Menshevik led Democratic Republic of Georgia experimented with workplace democracy by promoting cooperatives in the economy. These cooperatives were ended when Georgia was annexed into the Soviet Union. In Sweden, the Swedish Social Democratic Party made laws and reforms from 1950-70 to establish more democratic workplaces. Salvador Allende championed a large number of such experiments in Chile when he became president of Chile in 1970. Current approaches Limits on management Many organizations began to realize by the 1960s that tight control by too few people was encouraging groupthink, increasing turnover in staff and a loss of morale among qualified people helpless to appeal what they saw as misguided, uninformed, or poorly thought-out decisions. Often employees who publicly criticize such poor decision making of their higher management are penalized or even fired from their jobs on some pretext or other. The comic strip Dilbert has become popular satirizing this type of oblivious management, iconically represented by the Pointy-haired Boss, a nameless and clueless social climber. The Dilbert principle has been accepted as fact by some. Much management philosophy has focused on trying to limit manager power, differentiate leadership versus management, and so on. Henry Mintzberg, Peter Drucker and Donella Meadows were three very notable theorists addressing these concerns in the 1980s. Mintzberg and Drucker studied how executives spent their time, Meadows how change and leverage to resist it existed at all levels in all kinds of organizations. Adhocracy, functional leadership models and reengineering were all attempts to detect and remove administrative incompetence. Business process and quality management methods in general remove managerial flexibility that is often perceived as masking managerial mistakes, but also preventing transparency and facilitating fraud, as in the case of Enron. Had managers been more accountable to employees, it is argued, owners and employees would not have been defrauded. Equity model In the equity model, employees own voting shares of their company, most commonly through an employee stock ownership plan. The equity model of workplace democracy exists when bottom-up practices, such as participatory management, are combined with the top-down influence provided by their voting rights. Codetermination German law specifically mandates democratic worker participation in the oversight of workplaces with 2000 or more employees. Similar laws exist in Denmark for businesses with more than 20 workers and France for businesses with more than 5000 workers. Staff and Worker Representative Congresses In China, a form of workplace democracy is mandated by law for state-owned enterprises and permitted in non-state-owned collectives and companies. This is done through Staff and Worker Representative Congresses (SWRCs), composed of workers directly elected by all workers in the workplace to represent them. As of the 1980s and 1990s, SWRCs were, in theory, broadly similar to continental European and Japanese workers' workplace councils in terms of rights and powers and consensus building, as opposed to the Anglo-American model "adversarial model" relating management and workers. Findings from interviews in 1997 suggested that in practice, SWRCs did have some real power, including some cases of dismissing managers. Examples of companies organized by workplace democracy Mondragon Mondragon Cooperative Corporation is a large worker cooperative based in Spain, legally considered to be corporation. The Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff describes it as "a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organization of production". Marland Mold Marland Mold was a company started in 1946 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, by Severino Marchetto and Paul Ferland. The company at first, designed and built steel molds for plastic products throughout the 1950s and 60s. In 1969 the owners sold the company to VCA which was later bought by The Ethyl Corporation. The Marland Mold employees voted to join the International Union of Electrical Workers, because of a dispute that took place over health insurance. The plant's manager started to pay less attention and put less time into the Pittsfield plant so the profits declined. The plant was put up for sale in 1992. The employees ended up buying out the plant, even though they weren't fans of employee ownership before, they needed to save their jobs. There immediately was a burst in production and they were able to produce molds that normally took the 3,000 hours to make in 2,200 hours. They had financial stake in the company now which gave them new motivation for the company's success. The other two ideas that were key components to their success was the education of all members about their new roles, and building an ownership culture within the organization. In 1995, they had officially bought all ownership stock and buyout lenders and the company was completely employee owned. Through all of this employees were also able to gain a broader perspective on the company, like being able to understand others views of different conflicts in the workplace. In 2007, Marland Mold celebrated their 15th anniversary of employee ownership. In 2010, Marland Mold were acquired by Curtil. In 2017, the Pittsfield plant was shut. Semco In the 1980s, Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler, converted his family firm, a light manufacturing concern called Semco, and transformed it into a strictly democratic establishment where managers were interviewed and then elected by workers. All managerial decisions were subject to democratic review, debate and vote, with the full participation of all workers. This radical approach to management got him and the company a great deal of attention. Semler argued that handing the company over to the workers was the only way to free time for himself to go build up the customer, government and other relationships required to make the company grow. By giving up the fight to hold any control of internals, Semler was able to focus on marketing, positioning, and offer his advice (as a paid, elected spokesman, though his position as major shareholder was not so negotiable) as if he were, effectively, an outside management consultant hired by the company. Decentralization of management functions, he claimed, gave him a combination of insider information and outsider credibility, plus the legitimacy of truly speaking for his workers in the same sense as an elected political leader. Other companies Brukman Egged (formerly) Evergreen Cooperatives FaSinPat Flaskô (Portuguese Wikipedia) Hotel Bauen Indian Coffee House LIP Pascual Boing Sri Lanka Transport Board (formerly) Suma Wholefoods Tandanor shipyard The Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative W. L. Gore and Associates Zapatista coffee cooperatives Research on workplace democracy Public opinion A 2023 study in the United States found that the people surveyed generally support workplace democracy, even in survey experiments where respondents are exposed to question framings that emphasize the costs of workplace democracy. Management science studies There are many management science papers on the application of democratic structuring to the workplace, and its benefits. Benefits are often contrasted to simple command hierarchy arrangements in which "the boss" can hire anyone and fire anyone, and takes absolute and total responsibility for their own well-being and also all that occurs "under" them. The command hierarchy is a preferred management style followed in many companies for its simplicity, speed and low process overheads. London Business School chief, Nigel Nicholson, in his 1998 Harvard Business Review paper: "How Hardwired is Human Behavior?" suggested that human nature was just as likely to cause problems in the workplace as in larger social and political settings, and that similar methods were required to deal with stressful situations and difficult problems. He held up the workplace democracy model advanced by Ricardo Semler as the "only" one that actually took cognizance of human foibles. Effects on productivity A meta-analysis of 43 studies on worker participation found there was no negative correlation between workplace democracy and higher efficiency and productivity. A report looking at research on democratic workplaces in the USA, Europe and Latin America found workplace democracy had staff working 'better and smarter' with production organized more efficiently. They were also able to organize more efficiently on a larger scale and in more capital-intensive industries than hierarchical workplaces. A 1987 study of democratic workplaces in Italy, the UK and France found that workplace democracy has a positive relationship with productivity and that democratic firms do not get less productive as they get larger. A report on democratic workplaces in the USA found that they can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses and have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation. A 1995 study of workplace democracy in the timber industry in the Northwest United States found that productivity increased by 6 to 14% with workplace democracy. A 2006 meta-study on workplace democracy found that it can 'equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership' and 'enrich local social capital.' Another 2006 study reviewing existing evidence found that contrary to the popular idea that worker participation would decrease productivity, it actually increases it. A 1985 study in France that the typical increase to productivity from workplace democracy was about 5%. Another 2022 study using data from France found workplace democracy increases economic performance in knowledge-heavy sectors. However, a 1986 study of plywood companies in the USA found democratic workplaces lost productivity due to them hiring more workers who were not given equal democratic rights compared to original workers. Another study looking at evidence of construction companies in the 1980s indicated that democratic workplaces had equal or lower productivity compared to other workplaces. Effects on business longevity According to an analysis, businesses with democratic workplaces in British Columbia, Alberta, and Quebec in the 2000s were almost half as likely as businesses with hierarchical workplaces to fail in ten years. According to an analysis of all businesses in Uruguay between 1997 - 2009, businesses with democratic workplaces have a 29% smaller chance of closure than other firms. In Italy, businesses with democratic workplaces that have been created by workers buying a business when it's facing a closure or put up to sale have a 3 year survival rate of 87%, compared to 48% of all Italian businesses. In 2005, 1% of German businesses failed but the statistic for businesses with democratic workplaces was less than 0.1%. A 2012 study of Spanish and French businesses with democratic workplaces found that they “have been more resilient than conventional enterprises during the economic crisis." In France, the three year survival rate of businesses with democratic workplaces is 80%-90%, compared to the 66% overall survival rate for all businesses. During the 2008 economic crisis, the number of workers in businesses with democratic workplaces in France increased by 4.2%, while employment in other businesses decreased by 0.7%. Effects on workers A 2018 study from South Korea found that workers had higher motivation in democratic workplaces. A 2014 study from Italy found that democratic workplaces were the only kind of workplace which increased trust between workers. A 2013 study from the United States found that democratic workplaces in the healthcare industry had significantly higher levels of job satisfaction. A 2011 study in France found that democratic workplaces “had a positive effect on workers’ job satisfaction.” A 2019 meta-study indicates that “the impact [of democratic workplaces] on the happiness workers is generally positive”. A 1995 study from the United States indicates that “employees who embrace an increased influence and participation in workplace decisions also reported greater job satisfaction”. A 2008 study found mixed results for "spillover" effects on workers, where working in a democratic workplace doesn't increase the odds of voting but slightly increases the odds of community engagement. A 1986 study of plywood companies in the USA found that democratic workplaces tended to over-report accidents whilst conventional capitalist ones would under-report them. Contrary to theoretical expectations of democratic workplaces, they were not safer for workers than conventional capitalist workplaces. See also Aristocracy of labour Cooperative Deliberative democracy Libertarian socialism Popular assembly Socialism Syndicalism The Lucas Plan Theory X and Theory Y Worker cooperative Workers' control Workers' self-management References External links Quotes and other writings on workplace democracy (Chomsky, Wheatley, et al.) Articles by David Ellerman on workplace democracy Workplace Democracy and Democratic Ownership—Richard Wolff & Gar Alperovitz at Left Forum, 2013. Organizational behavior Anti-capitalism Socialism Workplace Democracy Cooperatives Types of democracy Democratic socialism

Political polarization

Political polarization (spelled polarisation in British English, African and Caribbean English, and New Zealand English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideological polarization (differences between the policy positions) and affective polarization (an emotional dislike and distrust of political out-groups). Most discussions of polarization in political science consider polarization in the context of political parties and democratic systems of government. In two-party systems, political polarization usually embodies the tension of its binary political ideologies and partisan identities. However, some political scientists assert that contemporary polarization depends less on policy differences on a left and right scale but increasingly on other divisions such as religious against secular, nationalist against globalist, traditional against modern, or rural against urban. Polarization is associated with the process of politicization. Definitions and measurements Polarization itself is typically understood as "a prominent division or conflict that forms between major groups in a society or political system and that is marked by the clustering and radicalisation of views and beliefs at two distant and antagonistic poles." as defined by the Institute for Integrated Transitions and Ford Foundation. Political scientists typically distinguish between two levels of political polarization: elite and mass. "Elite polarization" focuses on the polarization of the political elites, like party organizers and elected officials. "Mass polarization" (or popular polarization) focuses on the polarization of the masses, most often the electorate or general public. Elite polarization Elite polarization refers to polarization between the party-in-government and the party-in-opposition. Polarized political parties are internally cohesive, unified, programmatic, and ideologically distinct; they are typically found in a parliamentary system of democratic governance. In a two-party system, a polarized legislature has two important characteristics: first, there is little-to-no ideological overlap between members of the two parties; and second, almost all conflict over legislation and policies is split across a broad ideological divide. This leads to a conflation of political parties and ideologies (i.e., Democrat and Republican become nearly perfect synonyms for liberal and conservative) and the collapse of an ideological center. However, using a cross-national design that covers 25 European countries, a recent study shows that it is not the number of parties itself, but the way a party interreacts with another that influences the magnitude and nature of affective polarization. The vast majority of studies on elite polarization focus on legislative and deliberative bodies. For many years, political scientists measured polarization in the US by examining the ratings of party members published by interest groups, but now, most analyze roll-call voting patterns to investigate trends in party-line voting and party unity. Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Taddy used the text of the Congressional Record to document differences in speech patterns between Republicans and Democrats as a measure of polarization, finding a dramatic increase in polarized speech patterns starting in 1994. Mass polarization Mass polarization, or popular polarization, occurs when an electorate's attitudes towards political issues, policies, celebrated figures, or other citizens are neatly divided along party lines. At the extreme, each camp questions the moral legitimacy of the other, viewing the opposing camp and its policies as an existential threat to their way of life or the nation as a whole. There are multiple types or measures of mass polarization. Ideological polarization refers to the extent to which the electorate has divergent beliefs on ideological issues (e.g., abortion or affirmative action) or beliefs that are consistently conservative or liberal across a range of issues (e.g., having a conservative position on both abortion and affirmative action even if those positions are not "extreme"). Partisan sorting refers to the extent to which the electorate "sorts" or identifies with a party based on their ideological, racial, religious, gender, or other demographic characteristics. Affective polarization refers to the extent to which the electorate "dislikes" or "distrusts" those from other parties. Political scientists who study mass polarization generally rely on data from opinion polls and election surveys. They look for trends in respondents' opinions on a given issue, their voting history, and their political ideology (conservative, liberal, moderate, etc.), and they try to relate those trends to respondents' party identification and other potentially polarizing factors (like geographic location or income bracket). Political scientists typically limit their inquiry to issues and questions that have been constant over time, in order to compare the present day to what the political climate has historically been. Some of recent studies also use decision-making games to measure the extent to which ingroup members discriminate outgroup members relative to their group members. Recent academic work suggests that intolerance at the ideological extremes can lead to polarization with opinions more polarized than identities, intolerance among moderates improves cohesion. Some political scientists argue that polarization requires divergence on a broad range of issues, while others argue that only a few issues are required. Affective polarization Affective polarization refers to the phenomenon where individuals' feelings and emotions towards members of their own political party or group become more positive, while their feelings towards members of the opposing party or group become more negative. This can lead to increased hostility and a lack of willingness to compromise or work together with people who hold different political views. This phenomenon can be seen in both online and offline settings, and has been on the rise in several countries in recent years. Affective polarization has been estimated via a variety of methods, including the Affective Polarization Scale. Affective polarization may lead to aggressive attitudes and behaviors toward members of other ideological groups within the same country. Extreme affective polarization may even lead to dangerous consequences like societal disintegration. Affective polarization can be reduced by various means, such as feeling sadness together as a group (which often happens during Memorial Days). A high prevalence of respectful discussions with political others may also reduce affective polarization by increasing political tolerance and inter-party trust. High salience of a national common identity may also reduce affective polarization, as members of other parties are suddenly seen as in-group members. Causes There are various causes of political polarization and these include political parties, redistricting, the public's political ideology, the mass media, and political context. Party polarization Some scholars argue that diverging parties has been one of the major driving forces of polarization as policy platforms have become more distant. This theory is based on recent trends in the United States Congress, where the majority party prioritizes the positions that are most aligned with its party platform and political ideology. The adoption of more ideologically distinct positions by political parties can cause polarization among both elites and the electorate. For example, after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the number of conservative Democrats in Congress decreased, while the number of conservative Republicans increased. Within the electorate during the 1970s, Southern Democrats shifted toward the Republican Party, showing polarization among both the elites and the electorate of both main parties. In this sense, political polarization could be a top-down process, in which elite polarization leads to—or at least precedes—popular polarization. However, polarization among elites does not necessarily produce polarization within the electorate, and polarized electoral choices can often reflect elite polarization rather than voters' preferences. Political scientists have shown politicians have an incentive to advance and support polarized positions. These argue that during the early 1990s, the Republican Party used polarizing tactics to become the majority party in the United States House of Representatives—which political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein refer to as Newt Gingrich's "guerrilla war." What political scientists have found is that moderates are less likely to run than are candidates who are in line with party doctrine, otherwise known as "party fit." Other theories state politicians who cater to more extreme groups within their party tend to be more successful, helping them stay in office while simultaneously pulling their constituency toward a polar extreme. A study by Nicholson (2012) found voters are more polarized by contentious statements from leaders of the opposing party than from the leaders of their own party. As a result, political leaders may be more likely to take polarized stances. With regards to multiparty systems, Giovanni Sartori (1966, 1976) claims the splitting of ideologies in the public constituency causes further divides within the political parties of the countries. He theorizes that the extremism of public ideological movement is the basis for the creation of highly polarized multiparty systems. Sartori named this polarizing phenomenon polarized pluralism and claimed it would lead to further polarization in many opposing directions (as opposed to in simply two directions, as in a polarized two-party system) over policy issues. Polarization in multiparty systems can also be defined along two ideological extremes, like in the case of India in the 1970s. Ideological splits within a number of India's major parties resulted in two polarized coalitions on the right and left, each consisting of multiple political parties. Political fund-raisers and donors can also exert significant influence and control over legislators. Party leaders are expected to be productive fund-raisers, in order to support the party's campaigns. After Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, special interests in the U.S. were able to greatly impact elections through increased undisclosed spending, notably through Super political action committees. Some, such as Washington Post opinion writer Robert Kaiser, argued this allowed wealthy people, corporations, unions, and other groups to push the parties' policy platforms toward ideological extremes, resulting in a state of greater polarization. Other scholars, such as Raymond J. La Raja and David L. Wiltse, note that this does not necessarily hold true for mass donors to political campaigns. These scholars argue a single donor who is polarized and contributes large sums to a campaign does not seem to usually drive a politician toward political extremes. The public In democracies and other representative governments, citizens vote for the political actors who will represent them. Some scholars argue that political polarization reflects the public's ideology and voting preferences. Dixit and Weibull (2007) claim that political polarization is a natural and regular phenomenon. Party loyalism is a strong element of voters' thinking. Individuals who have higher political knowledge will not be influenced by anything a politician says. The polarization is merely a reflection of the party that the voter belongs to, and whichever direction it moves in. They argue that there is a link between public differences in ideology and the polarization of representatives, but that an increase in preference differences is usually temporary and ultimately results in compromise. Fernbach, Rogers, Fox and Sloman (2013) argue that it is a result of people having an exaggerated faith in their understanding of complex issues. Asking people to explain their policy preferences in detail typically resulted in more moderate views. Simply asking them to list the reasons for their preferences did not result in any such moderation. Studies undertaken in the U.S. (2019) and the UK (2022) have found that political polarization is generally less acute among the public than is portrayed in the media. Moreover, non-nuanced reporting by the media about poll data and public opinions can even aggravate political polarization. Morris P. Fiorina (2006, 2008) posits the hypothesis that polarization is a phenomenon which does not hold for the public, and instead is formulated by commentators to draw further division in government. Fiorina connects this phenomenon to what he describes as "party sorting", which is where political ideologies tend to associate with specific political parties (conservatives with the Republican Party and liberals with the Democratic party). Other studies indicate that cultural differences focusing on ideological movements and geographical polarization within the United States constituency is correlated with rises in overall political polarization between 1972 and 2004. Religious, ethnic, and other cultural divides within the public have often influenced the emergence of polarization. According to Layman et al. (2005), the ideological split between U.S. Republicans and Democrats also crosses into the religious cultural divide. They claim that Democrats have generally become more moderate in religious views whereas Republicans have become more traditionalist. For example, political scientists have shown that in the United States, voters who identify as Republican are more likely to vote for a strongly evangelical candidate than Democratic voters. This correlates with the rise in polarization in the United States. Another theory contends that religion does not contribute to full-group polarization, but rather, coalition and party activist polarization causes party shifts toward a political extreme. In some post-colonial countries, the public may be polarized along ethnic divides that remain from the colonial regime. In South Africa in the late 1980s, members of the conservative, pro-apartheid National Party were no longer supportive of apartheid, and, therefore, no longer ideologically aligned with their party. Dutch Afrikaners, white English, and native Africans split based on racial divisions, causing polarization along ethnic lines. Economic inequality can also motivate the polarization of the public. For example, in post-World War I Germany, the Communist Workers Party, and the National Socialists, a fascist party, emerged as the dominant political ideologies and proposed to address Germany's economic problems in drastically different ways. In Venezuela, in the late 20th century, presidential candidate Hugo Chávez used economic inequality in the country to polarize voters, employing a popular and aggressive tone to gain popularity. The media Also stated by Sheena Peckham, Algorithms used by social media to operate creates an echo-chamber for the user causing selective exposure and thus leading to online hate, misinformation, malinformation and more (Peckham, 2023). A number of techniques were employed by the researchers and social scientist to trace the relationship between internet usage. Lelkes, along with his colleagues, use state Right-of-way laws, which affect the cost of internet infrastructure, as an instrument used for internet access in their country (Lelkes et al. 2017) and discovered a positive relation between internet access and affective polarization in the country. At the same time, (Alcot et al. 2021) conducted another experiment in which individuals in the US. were asked to deactivate their Facebook account for a $102 incentive, prior to the US. midterm election. It was found that those who deactivated their accounts and did not use Facebook were less polarized as compared to those individuals whose accounts were still activated during the experiment. In addition, Boxell assess ANEX data from 1972-2016 by age cohorts analyzing their likelihood of using social media. He was shocked to found that the largest polarization index over time was occurred among oldest cohort, which was less likely to use social media (Boxell et al., 2017). Thus, he found a small or negative relation between internet usage and polarization. Also, Markus Prior in his article tried to trace the causal link between social media and affective polarization but he found no evidence that partisan media are making ordinary American voter more partisan, thus negating the role of partisan media as a cause of affective polarization (Prior, 2013). The mass media has grown as an institution over the past half-century. Political scientists argue that this has particularly affected the voting public in the last three decades, as previously less partisan viewers are given more polarized news media choices. The mass media's current, fragmented, high-choice environment has induced a movement of the audience from more even-toned political programming to more antagonistic and one-sided broadcasts and articles. These programs tend to appeal to partisan viewers who watch the polarized programming as a self-confirming source for their ideologies. Countries with less diversified but emerging media markets, such as China and South Korea, have become more polarized due to the diversification of political media. In addition, most search engines and social networks (e.g., Google, Facebook) now utilize computer algorithms as filters, which personalize web content based on a user's search history, location, and previous clicking patterns, creating more polarized access to information. This method of personalizing web content results in filter bubbles, a term coined by digital activist Eli Pariser that refers to the polarized ideological bubbles that are created by computer algorithms filtering out unrelated information and opposing views. A 2011 study found ideological segregation of online news consumption is lower than the segregation of most offline news consumption and lower than the segregation of face-to-face interactions. This suggests that the filter bubbles effects of online media consumption are exaggerated. Other research also shows that online media does not contribute to the increased polarization of opinions. Solomon Messing and Sean J. Westwood state that individuals do not necessarily become polarized through media because they choose their own exposure, which tends to already align with their views. For instance, in an experiment where people could choose the content they wanted, people did not start to dislike their political opponents more after selecting between pro or anti immigration content. People did, however, start to counterargue the content. Academic studies found that providing people with impartial, objective information has the potential to reduce political polarization, but the effect of information on polarization is highly sensitive to contextual factors. Specifically, polarization over government spending was reduced when people were provided with a "Taxpayer Receipt," but not when they were also asked how they wanted the money to be spent. This suggests that subtle factors like the mood and tone of partisan news sources may have a large effect on how the same information is interpreted. This is confirmed by another study that shows that different emotions of messages can lead to polarization or convergence: joy is prevalent in emotional polarization, while sadness and fear play significant roles in emotional convergence. These findings can help to design more socially responsible algorithms by starting to focus on the emotional content of algorithmic recommendations. Research has primarily focused on the United States, a country with high polarization that has also increased over time. In Sweden, on the other hand, there is a stable ideological polarization over time. Experiments and surveys from Sweden also give limited support to the idea of increased ideological or affective polarization due to media use. The political context Some of recent studies emphasize the role of electoral context and the way parties interact with each other. For example, a recent study shows that coalition partnership can moderate the extent of affective polarization over parties. However, this study does not find evidence that the number of political parties and district magnitude that captures the proportionality of electoral systems would influence the extent of affective polarization. Also, electoral context, such as electoral salience, involvement in elections, elite polarization, and the strength of Eurosceptic parties, can intensify the divide. The impact of redistricting—potentially through gerrymandering or the manipulation of electoral borders to favor a political party—on political polarization in the United States has been found to be minimal in research by leading political scientists. Ranked-choice voting has also been put forward as a solution to political polarization. When politicians repeatedly favor partisan media outlets, they reinforce their supporters' existing biases, which can further fuel political polarization within the public. Consequences The implications of political polarization "are not entirely clear and may include some benefits as well as detrimental consequences." Polarization can be benign, natural, and democratizing, or it can be pernicious, having long term malignant effects on society and congesting essential democratic functions. Where voters see the parties as less divergent, they are less likely to be satisfied with how their democracy works. While its exact effects are disputed, it clearly alters the political process and the political composition of the general public. Pernicious polarization In political science, pernicious polarization occurs when a single political cleavage overrides other divides and commonalities to the point it has boiled into a single divide which becomes entrenched and self-reinforcing. Unlike most types of polarization, pernicious polarization does not need to be ideological. Rather, pernicious polarization operates on a single political cleavage, which can be partisan identity, religious vs secular, globalist vs nationalist, urban vs rural, etc. This political divide creates an explosion of mutual group distrust which hardens between the two political parties (or coalitions) and spreads beyond the political sphere into societal relations. People begin to perceive politics as "us" vs "them." The office of Ombudsman of Argentina has been vacant since 2009, along with a companion Public Defender's office, allegedly because of pernicious polarization. Causes According to Carothers & O'Donohue (2019), pernicious polarization is a process most often driven by a single political cleavage dominating an otherwise pluralistic political life, overriding other cleavages. On the other hand, Slater & Arugay (2019) have argued that it's not the depth of a single social cleavage, but the political elite's process for removing a leader which best explains whether or not polarization truly becomes pernicious. Lebas & Munemo (2019) have argued pernicious polarization is marked by both deeper societal penetration and segregation than other forms of political polarization, making it less amenable to resolution. It is agreed, however, that pernicious polarization reinforces and entrenches itself, dragging the country into a downward spiral of anger and division for which there are no easy remedies. Effect on governance Pernicious polarization makes compromise, consensus, interaction, and tolerance increasingly costly and tenuous for individuals and political actors on both sides of the divide. Pernicious polarization routinely weakens respect for democratic norms, corrodes basic legislative processes, undermines the nonpartisan nature of the judiciary and fuels public disaffection with political parties. It exacerbates intolerance and discrimination, diminishes societal trust, and increases violence throughout the society. As well as potentially leading to democratic backsliding. In country-by-country instances of pernicious polarization, it is common to see the winner exclude the loser from positions of power or using means to prevent the loser from becoming a threat in the future. In these situations, the loser typically questions the legitimacy of the institutions allowing the winner to create a hegemony, which causes citizens to grow cynical towards politics. In these countries, politics is often seen as a self-referential power game that has nothing to do with people. Effect on public trust Perniciously polarized societies often witness public controversies over factually provable questions. During this process, facts and moral truths increasingly lose their weight, as more people conform to the messages of their own bloc. Social and political actors such as journalists, academics, and politicians either become engaged in partisan storytelling or else incur growing social, political, and economic costs. Electorates lose confidence in public institutions. Support for norms and democracy decline. It becomes increasingly difficult for people to act in a morally principled fashion by appealing to the truth or acting in line with one's values when it conflicts with one's party interests. Once pernicious polarization takes hold, it takes on a life of its own, regardless of earlier intentions. Benefits of polarization Several political scientists have argued that most types of political polarization are beneficial to democracy, as well as a natural feature. The simplifying features of polarization can help democratization. Strategies which depend on opposition and exclusion are present in all forms of observed politics. Political polarization can help transform or disrupt the status quo, sometimes addressing injustices or imbalances in a popular vs. oligarchic struggle. Political polarization can serve to unify, invigorate, or mobilize potential allies at the elite and mass levels. It can also help to divide, weaken, or pacify competitors. Even the most celebrated social movements can be described as a "group of people involved in a conflict with clearly defined opponents having a conflictual orientation toward an opponent and a common identity." Political polarization can also provide voting heuristics to help voters choose among candidates, enabling political parties to mobilize supporters and provide programmatic choices. Polarizing politics can also help to overcome internal differences and frame a common identity, based in part on a common opposition to those resisting reforms. Still, polarization can be a risky political tool even when intended as an instrument of democratization, as it risks turning pernicious and self-propagating. US perspective See also Bipolarisation Civil war Contentious politics Cultural pluralism, in contrast False dilemma Hate speech Ideocracy Left–right politics Moral foundations theory Multi-party system Social polarization State collapse References Further reading Region-specific Hahm, Hyeonho, David Hilpert and Thomas König (2023) "Divided We Unite: The Nature of Partyism and the Role of Coalition Partnership in Europe". American Political Science Review, DOI: 10.1017/S0003055423000266 Hahm, Hyeonho, David Hilpert and Thomas König (2022) "Divided by Europe: Affective Polarisation in the Context of European Elections". West European Politics, DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2022.2133277 Politics Political science Political terminology Sectarianism

Neorealism (international relations)

Neorealism or structural realism is a theory of international relations that emphasizes the role of power politics in international relations, sees competition and conflict as enduring features and sees limited potential for cooperation. The anarchic state of the international system means that states cannot be certain of other states' intentions and their security, thus prompting them to engage in power politics. It was first outlined by Kenneth Waltz in his 1979 book Theory of International Politics. Alongside neoliberalism, neorealism is one of the two most influential contemporary approaches to international relations; the two perspectives dominated international relations theory from the 1960s to the 1990s. Neorealism emerged from the North American discipline of political science, and reformulates the classical realist tradition of E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Neorealism is subdivided into defensive and offensive neorealism. Origins Neorealism is an ideological departure from Hans Morgenthau's writing on classical realism. Classical realism originally explained the machinations of international politics as being based on human nature and therefore subject to the ego and emotion of world leaders. Neorealist thinkers instead propose that structural constraints—not strategy, egoism, or motivation—will determine behavior in international relations. John Mearsheimer made significant distinctions between his version of offensive neorealism and Morgenthau in his book titled The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Theory Structural realism holds that the nature of the international structure is defined by its ordering principle (anarchy), units of the system (states), and by the distribution of capabilities (measured by the number of great powers within the international system), with only the last being considered an independent variable with any meaningful change over time. The anarchic ordering principle of the international structure is decentralized, meaning there is no formal central authority; every sovereign state is formally equal in this system. These states act according to the logic of egoism, meaning states seek their own interest and will not subordinate their interest to the interests of other states. States are assumed at a minimum to want to ensure their own survival as this is a prerequisite to pursue other goals. This driving force of survival is the primary factor influencing their behavior and in turn ensures states develop offensive military capabilities for foreign interventionism and as a means to increase their relative power. Because states can never be certain of other states' future intentions, there is a lack of trust between states which requires them to be on guard against relative losses of power which could enable other states to threaten their survival. This lack of trust, based on uncertainty, is called the security dilemma. States are deemed similar in terms of needs but not in capabilities for achieving them. The positional placement of states in terms of abilities determines the distribution of capabilities. The structural distribution of capabilities then limits cooperation among states through fears of relative gains made by other states, and the possibility of dependence on other states. The desire and relative abilities of each state to maximize relative power constrain each other, resulting in a 'balance of power', which shapes international relations. It also gives rise to the 'security dilemma' that all nations face. There are two ways in which states balance power: internal balancing and external balancing. Internal balancing occurs as states grow their own capabilities by increasing economic growth and/or increasing military spending. External balancing occurs as states enter into alliances to check the power of more powerful states or alliances. Neorealism sees states as "black boxes," as the structure of the international system is emphasized rather than the units and their unique characteristics within it as being causal. Neorealists contend that there are essentially three possible systems according to changes in the distribution of capabilities, defined by the number of great powers within the international system. A unipolar system contains only one great power, a bipolar system contains two great powers, and a multipolar system contains more than two great powers. Neorealists conclude that a bipolar system is more stable (less prone to great power war and systemic change) than a multipolar system because balancing can only occur through internal balancing as there are no extra great powers with which to form alliances. Because there is only internal balancing in a bipolar system, rather than external balancing, there is less opportunity for miscalculations and therefore less chance of great power war. That is a simplification and a theoretical ideal. Neorealists argue that processes of emulation and competition lead states to behave in the aforementioned ways. Emulation leads states to adopt the behaviors of successful states (for example, those victorious in war), whereas competition leads states to vigilantly ensure their security and survival through the best means possible. Due to the anarchic nature of the international system and the inability of states to rely on other states or organizations, states have to engage in "self-help." For neorealists, social norms are considered largely irrelevant. This is in contrast to some classical realists which did see norms as potentially important. Neorealists are also skeptical of the ability of international organizations to act independently in the international system and facilitate cooperation between states. Defensive realism Structural realism has become divided into two branches, defensive and offensive realism, following the publication of Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics in 2001. Waltz's original formulation of neorealism is now sometimes called defensive realism, while Mearsheimer's modification of the theory is referred to as offensive realism. Both branches agree that the structure of the system is what causes states to compete, but defensive realism posits that most states concentrate on maintaining their security (i.e. states are security maximizers), while offensive realism claims that all states seek to gain as much power as possible (i.e. states are power maximizers). A foundational study in the area of defensive realism is Robert Jervis' classic 1978 article on the "security dilemma." It examines how uncertainty and the offense-defense balance may heighten or soften the security dilemma. Building on Jervis, Stephen Van Evera explores the causes of war from a defensive realist perspective. Offensive realism Offensive realism, developed by Mearsheimer differs in the amount of power that states desire. Mearsheimer proposes that states maximize relative power ultimately aiming for regional hegemony. In addition to Mearsheimer, a number of other scholars have sought to explain why states expand when opportunities to do so arise. For instance, Randall Schweller refers to states' revisionist agendas to account for their aggressive military action. Eric Labs investigates the expansion of war aims during wartime as an example of offensive behavior. Fareed Zakaria analyzes the history of US foreign relations from 1865 to 1914 and asserts that foreign interventions during this period were not motivated by worries about external threats but by a desire to expand US influence. Scholarly debate Within realist thought While neorealists agree that the structure of the international relations is the primary impetus in seeking security, there is disagreement among neorealist scholars as to whether states merely aim to survive or whether states want to maximize their relative power. The former represents the ideas of Kenneth Waltz, while the latter represents the ideas of John Mearsheimer and offensive realism. Other debates include the extent to which states balance against power (in Waltz's original neorealism and classic realism), versus the extent to which states balance against threats (as introduced in Stephen Walt's 'The Origins of Alliances' (1987)), or balance against competing interests (as introduced in Randall Schweller's 'Deadly Imbalances' (1998)). With other schools of thought Neorealists conclude that because war is an effect of the anarchic structure of the international system, it is likely to continue in the future. Indeed, neorealists often argue that the ordering principle of the international system has not fundamentally changed from the time of Thucydides to the advent of nuclear warfare. The view that long-lasting peace is not likely to be achieved is described by other theorists as a largely pessimistic view of international relations. One of the main challenges to neorealist theory is the democratic peace theory and supporting research, such as the book Never at War. Neorealists answer this challenge by arguing that democratic peace theorists tend to pick and choose the definition of democracy to achieve the desired empirical result. For example, the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Dominican Republic of Juan Bosch, and the Chile of Salvador Allende are not considered to be "democracies of the right kind" or the conflicts do not qualify as wars according to these theorists. Furthermore, they claim several wars between democratic states have been averted only by causes other than ones covered by democratic peace theory. Advocates of democratic peace theory see the spreading of democracy as helping to mitigate the effects of anarchy. With enough democracies in the world, Bruce Russett thinks that it "may be possible in part to supersede the 'realist' principles (anarchy, the security dilemma of states) that have dominated practice since at least the seventeenth century." John Mueller believes that it is not the spreading of democracy but rather other conditions (e.g., power) that bring about democracy and peace. In consenting with Mueller's argument, Kenneth Waltz notes that "some of the major democracies—Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth century—have been among the most powerful states of their eras." One of the most notable schools contending with neorealist thought, aside from neoliberalism, is the constructivist school, which is often seen to disagree with the neorealist focus on power and instead emphasises a focus on ideas and identity as an explanatory point for international relations trends. Recently, however, a school of thought called the English School merges neo-realist tradition with the constructivist technique of analyzing social norms to provide an increasing scope of analysis for international relations. Criticism Neorealism has been criticized from various directions. Other major paradigms of international relations scholarship, such as liberal and constructivist approaches have criticized neorealist scholarship in terms of theory and empirics. Within realism, classical realists and neoclassical realists have also challenged some aspects of neorealism. Among the issues that neorealism has been criticized over is the neglect of domestic politics, race, gains from trade, the pacifying effects of institutions, and the relevance of regime type for foreign policy behavior. David Strang argues that neorealist predictions fail to account for transformations in sovereignty over time and across regions. These transformations in sovereignty have had implications for cooperation and competition, as polities that were recognized as sovereign have seen considerably greater stability. In response to criticisms that neorealism lacks relevance for contemporary international policy and does a poor job explaining the foreign policy behavior of major powers, Charles Glaser wrote in 2003, "this is neither surprising nor a serious problem, because scholars who use a realist lens to understand international politics can, and have, without inconsistency or contradiction also employed other theories to understand issues that fall outside realism's central focus." Notable neorealists Robert J. Art Richard K. Betts Robert Gilpin Robert W. Tucker Joseph Grieco Robert Jervis Christopher Layne Jack Snyder John Mearsheimer Stephen Walt Kenneth Waltz Stephen Van Evera Barry Posen Charles L. Glaser Marc Trachtenberg Gottfried-Karl Kindermann See also Foreign interventionism International relations theory Mercantilism Neofunctionalism Neoliberalism Realpolitik Notes References Further reading Books Waltz, Kenneth N. (1959). Man, The State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis . Walt, Stephen (1990). The Origins of Alliances Van Evera, Stephen. (2001). Causes of War Waltz, Kenneth N. (2008). Realism and International Politics Art, Robert J. (2008). America's Grand Strategy and World Politics Glaser, Charles L. (2010). Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation Articles Jervis, Robert (1978). Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma (World Politics, Vol. 30, No.2, 1978) Art, Robert J. (1998). Geopolitics Updated: The Strategy of Selective Engagement (International Security, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1998–99) Farber, Henry S.; Gowa, Jeanne (1995). Polities and Peace (International Security, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1995) Gilpin, Robert (1988). The Theory of Hegemonic War (The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 18, No. 4, 1988) Posen, Barry (2003). Command of the Commons: The Military Foundations of U.S. Hegemony (International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2003) External links Theory Talks Interview with Kenneth Waltz, founder of neorealism (May 2011) Theory Talks Interview with neorealist Robert Jervis (July 2008) International relations theory

Political egalitarianism

Political egalitarianism describes an inclusive and fair allocation of political power or influence, fair processes, and fair treatment of all regardless of characteristics like race, religion, age, wealth or intelligence. Political egalitarianism, and its close cousin political equality, are key founding principles and sources of legitimacy for many democracies. Related principles include one person, one vote and equality before the law. Discussion Egalitarianism Egalitarianism denotes the belief that all people are of equal fundamental worth and should have equal status. Egalitarians tend to focus more on process and treating people as social equals than on the raw distribution of power. Political equality Political equality is only achieved when the norms, rules and procedures that govern the community afford equal consideration to all. Robert Dahl believes that the ideal of democracy assumes that political equality is desirable. He goes on to argue that political equality and democracy are supported by the inherent intrinsic equal worth of every person (intrinsic equality) and the tendency of concentrated power to corrupt. Equality before the law Equality before law means that the law applies to all peoples equally and without exceptions. For example, the freedom of speech should apply the same to all members of a society. Laws can sometimes be designed to help minimize unequal application. Well-designed constitutions, for example, can help protect political rights in functioning democracies. See also "All men are created equal" Deliberative democracy Democratization Human rights Money in politics Political freedom Positive liberty Sortition Universal suffrage References External links "Political egalitarianism" search on Open Library Political equality provisions in U.S. State constitutions by TheDemocracyPrinciple.law.wisc.edu Political terminology Egalitarianism Democracy Concepts in political philosophy

Regime

In politics, a regime (also spelled régime) is the form of government or the set of rules, cultural, or social norms, that regulate the operation of a government or institution and its interactions with society. The two broad categories of regimes are democratic and autocratic. Autocratic regimes can be further divided into types such as dictatorial, totalitarian, absolutist, monarchic, and oligarchic. A key similarity across all regimes is the presence of rulers and formal or informal institutions. Political regimes According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there are three main types of political regimes today: democracies, totalitarian regimes, authoritarian regimes, with hybrid regimes sitting between these categories. The CIA website also has a complete list of every country in the world with their respective types of regime. The term regime is often used in a demeaning, derogatory way usually to portray a leader as corrupt or undemocratic. It is common to tie an individual or ideology to a government regime i.e. Putin's regime in Russia or China's Communist regime. Usage While the term originally referred to any type of government, in modern usage it often has a negative connotation, implying authoritarianism or dictatorship. Merriam-Webster defines a regime simply as a form of government, while the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "a government, especially an authoritarian one." Contemporary academic usage of the term "regime" is broader than popular and journalistic usage, meaning "an intermediate stratum between the government (which makes day-to-day decisions and is easy to alter) and the state (which is a complex bureaucracy tasked with a range of coercive functions)." In global studies and international relations, the concept of regime is also used to name international regulatory agencies (see International regime), which lie outside of the control of national governments. Some authors thus distinguish analytically between institutions and regimes while recognizing that they are bound up with each other: Regimes can thus be defined as sets of protocols and norms embedded either in institutions or institutionalized practices – formal such as states or informal such as the "liberal trade regime" – that are publicly enacted and relatively enduring. Urban regimes Other regime theorists argue that there are also more localized urban regimes that are categorized by interests, institutions, and ideas in a city. Urban regimes are defined as the relations between local state and polity elites with particular institution forms and policy goals. Urban regime theorist Jill Clark argues that these regime types are categorized by economic actors and policy-making within a community. The six urban regime types are: entrepreneurial, caretaker, player, progressive, stewardship, and the demand-side. An entrepreneurial urban regime is defined as: Strong ties to business leaders, formed to advance a cities hierarchy in relation to other cities, and are operated with closed development decision-making venues with relevant business interests and political leaders. A caretaker urban regime is: A regime designed to preserve the status quo, keep taxes low and preserve the same quality of life. Often associated with taxpayers and homeowners' interests. A player urban regime is: Active government participation in private decision making. This type of regime manages and resolves disputes between community groups and business. A player urban regime when combined with state actions develops into a stewardship urban regime. A progressive urban regime is: A key feature of progressive urban regimes is the redistribution of the benefits of a industrialized, developed society. The focus of the regime is economic equity, how to reallocate the benefits of society to various groups or areas of the city who need it most. Most commonly these are ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged people, and neighborhoods destroyed or changed by gentrification. Everyone in this system has a say on who is most deserving and who will receive these benefits. Progressive urban regimes become activist regimes when merged with a stewardship role. A stewardship urban regime is: More adversarial towards business then a entrepreneurial regime, and more protective of community interests in relation to big business i.e. looking out for the little guy. A stewardship regime holds itself accountable for protecting taxpayer investments, but not in the redistribution of them like a progressive urban regime would. A demand-side urban regime is: A key feature of demand-side urban regimes are their support for small business and neighborhood revitalization. They encourage and provide state assistance for small business, as well as birthing small business through state operated venture capital programs. This also allows the government to retain an active role in development. Demand side urban regimes can be created when a progressive regime is connected to state assistance for small business owners. Measuring regime There are two primary ways in which regimes are measured: continuous measures of democracy (e.g. Freedom House (FH), Polity, and the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)) and binary measures of democracy (e.g. Regimes of the World). A continuous measure of democracy creates categorical classifications based on gradations of democracy and autocracy though previously, primarily focused on the differentiation of democracies and autocracies. A binary measure of democracy classifies a country as either a democracy or not. While some argue that unless a government is “x” or generates “x”, then such an institution is not worthy of being declared a democracy, academics establish that there is no single set of practices that embody democracy, but rather a matrix of various outcomes and combinations. According to Stanford political science professor Philippe C. Schmitter and associate professor Terry Lynn Karl, such matrices take into consideration factors such as consensus, participation, access, responsiveness, majority rule, parliamentary sovereignty, party government, pluralism, federalism, presidentialism, and checks and balances. V-Dem Institute, an independent research institute that aims to conceptualize and measure democracy, serves as one of the world’s most well-known continuous measures of democracy. V-Dem formally describes their data utilizing a notation that contains ratings of numerous indicators. Such indicators include access to justice, electoral corruption, and freedom from government sponsored violence. V-Dem then relies on country experts who supply subjective ratings of said latent or concealed regime indicators over any given period of time. See also Ancien Régime Carbon audit regime Exchange rate regime International regime Legal practice Regime change Regime theory Citations Sources O'Neill, Patrick, Essentials of Comparative Government Government

Political globalization

Political globalization is the growth of the worldwide political system, both in size and complexity. That system includes national governments, their governmental and intergovernmental organizations as well as government-independent elements of global civil society such as international non-governmental organizations and social movement organizations. One of the key aspects of the political globalization is the declining importance of the nation-state and the rise of other actors on the political scene. The creation and existence of the United Nations is called one of the classic examples of political globalization. Political globalization is one of the three main dimensions of globalization commonly found in academic literature, with the two other being economic globalization and cultural globalization. Definitions William R. Thompson has defined it as "the expansion of a global political system, and its institutions, in which inter-regional transactions (including, but certainly not limited to trade) are managed". Valentine M. Moghadam defined it as "an increasing trend toward multilateralism (in which the United Nations plays a key role), to an emerging 'transnational state apparatus,' and toward the emergence of national and international nongovernmental organizations that act as watchdogs over governments and have increased their activities and influence". Manfred B. Steger in turn wrote that it "refers to the intensification and expansion of political interrelations across the globe". The longer definition by Colin Crouch goes as follows: "Political globalization refers to the growing power of institutions of global governance such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). But it also refers to the spread and influence of international non-governmental organizations, social movement organizations and transnational advocacy networks operating across borders and constituting a kind of global civil society." Finally, Gerard Delanty and Chris Rumford define it as "a tension between three processes which interact to produce the complex field of global politics: global geopolitics, global normative culture and polycentric networks." The book World Federalist Manifesto, Guide to Political Globalization defines political globalization as "the creation of a system of global governance that regulates relationships among nations and guarantees the rights arising from social and economic globalization." Methodology Salvatore Babones discussing sources used by scholars for studying political globalizations noted the usefulness of Europa World Year Book for data on diplomatic relationships between countries, publications of International Institute for Strategic Studies such as The Military Balance for matters of military, and US government publication Patterns of Global Terrorism for matters of terrorism. Political globalization is measured by aggregating and weighting data on the number of embassies and high commissioners in a country, the number of the country's membership in international organization, its participation in the UN peacekeeping missions, and the number of international treaties signed by said country. This measure has been used by Axel Dreher, Noel Gaston, Pim Martens Jeffrey Haynes and is available from the KOF institute at ETH Zurich. Aspects Like globalization itself, political globalization has several dimensions and lends itself to a number of interpretations. It has been discussed in the context of new emancipatory possibilities, as well as in the context of loss of autonomy and fragmentation of the social world. Political globalization can be seen in changes such as democratization of the world, creation of the global civil society, and moving beyond the centrality of the nation-state, particularly as the sole actor in the field of politics. Some of the questions central to the discussion of the political globalization are related to the future of the nation-state, whether its importance is diminishing and what are the causes for those changes; and understanding the emergence of the concept of global governance. The creation and existence of the United Nations has been called one of the classic examples of political globalization. Political actions by non-governmental organizations and social movements, concerned about various topics such as environmental protection, is another example. David Held has proposed that continuing political globalization may lead to the creation of a world government-like cosmopolitan democracy, though this vision has also been criticized as too idealistic. Political Globalization and Nation State There is a heated debate over Political Globalization and Nation State. The question arises whether or not political globalization signifies the decline of the nation-state. Hyper globalists argue that globalization has engulfed today's world in such a way that state boundaries are beginning to lose significance. However, skeptics disregard this as naiveté, believing that the nation-state remains the supreme actor in international relations. Cyclical theories of globalization George Modelski George Modelski defines global order as a 'management network centred on a lead unit and contenders for leadership, (pursuing) collective action at the global level'. The system is allegedly cyclical. Each cycle is about 100 years' duration and a new hegemonic power appears each time: Portugal 1492-1580; in the Age of Discovery the Netherlands 1580-1688; beginning with the Eighty Years' War, 1579-1588 United Kingdom (1) 1688-1792; beginning with the wars of Louis XVI United Kingdom (2) 1792-1914; beginning with the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars the United States 1914 to (predicted) 2030; beginning with World War I and two. Each cycle has four phases; 1, Global war, which a) involves almost all global powers, b) is 'characteristically naval' c) is caused by a system breakdown, d) is extremely lethal, e) results in a new global leader, capable of tackling global problems. The war is a 'decision process' analogous to a national election. The Thirty Years War, though lasting and destructive, was not a 'global war' 2, World power, which lasts for 'about one generation'. The new incumbent power 'prioritises global problems', mobilises a coalition, is decisive and innovative. Pre-modern communities become dependent on the hegemonic power 3, Delegitimation. This phase can last for 20–27 years; the hegemonic power falters, as rival powers assert new nationalistic policies. 4, Deconcentration. The hegemony's problem-solving capacity declines. It yields to a multipolar order of warring rivals. Pre-modern communities become less dependent. A challenger appears (successively, Spain, France, France, Germany, and the USSR) and a new global war ensues. The hegemonic nations tend to have: 'insular geography'; a stable, open society; a strong economy; strategic organisation, and strong political parties. By contrast, the 'challenger' nations have: closed systems; absolute rulers; domestic instability; and continental geographic locations. The long cycle system is repetitive, but also evolutionary. According to Modelski, it originated in about 1493 through a) the decline of Venetian naval power, b) Chinese abandonment of naval exploration, and c) discovery of sea routes to India and the Americas. It has developed in parallel with the growth of the nation-state, political parties, command of the sea, and 'dependency of pre-modern communities'. The system is flawed, lacking in coherence, solidarity, and capacity to address the North-South divide. Modelski speculates that US deconcentration might be replaced by a power based in the 'Pacific rim' or by an explicit coalition of nations, as 'co-operation is urgently required in respect of nuclear weapons'. Modelski 'dismisses the idea that international relations are anarchic'. His research, influenced by Immanuel Wallerstein, was 'measured in decades... a major achievement' says Peter J. Taylor Joshua S. Goldstein Goldstein in 1988 posited a 'hegemony cycle' of 150 years' duration, the four hegemonic powers since 1494 being; Hapsburg Spain, 1494-1648; ended by the Thirty Years War, in which Spain itself was the 'challenger'; the Treaty of Westphalia and the beginnings of the nation-state. the Netherlands, 1648-1815; ended by the challenge from France of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the Treaty of Vienna and introduction of the Congress System Great Britain, 1815-1945; ended by Germany's challenge in two World Wars, and the postwar settlement, including the World Bank, IMF, GATT, the United Nations and NATO the United States, since 1945. Goldstein suggests that US hegemony may 'at an indeterminate time' be challenged and ended by China (the 'best fit'), by western Europe, Japan, or (writing in 1988) the USSR. The situation is unstable due to the continuance of Machiavellian Power politics and the deployment of nuclear weapons. The choice lies between 'global cooperation or global suicide'. Thus there may be 'an end to hegemony itself'. Goldstein speculates that Venetian hegemony, ceded to Spain in 1494, may have begun in 1350 See also Global citizenships Global civics Global politics Supranational union Transnational citizenship Transnationalism References Further reading Ougaard, M. 2004. Political Globalization: State, Power, and Social Forces. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. External links KOF Index of Globalization Globalization globalization Global politics

Polity

A polity is a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of political institutionalized social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any group of people organized for governance, such as the board of a corporation, the government of a country, or the government of a country subdivision. A polity may have various forms, such as a republic administered by an elected representative, the realm of a hereditary monarch, and others. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, states with limited recognition, constituent country, or a dependent territory. Overview In geopolitics, a polity can manifest in different forms such as a state, an empire, an international organization, a political organization or another identifiable, resource-manipulating organizational structure. A polity like a state does not need to be a sovereign unit. The preeminent polities today are Westphalian states and nation-states, commonly referred to as countries. A polity may encapsulate a multitude of organizations; many of these may form or are involved to the apparatus of contemporary states such as their subordinate civil and local government authorities. Polities do not need to be in control of any geographic areas, as not all political entities and governments have controlled the resources of one fixed geographic area. The historical Steppe Empires originating from the Eurasian Steppe are the most prominent example of non-sedentary polities. These polities differ from states because of their lack of a fixed, defined territory. Empires also differ from states in that their territories are not statically defined or permanently fixed and consequently that their body politic was also dynamic and fluid. It is useful then to think of a polity as a political community. A polity can also be defined either as a faction within a larger (usually state) entity or at different times as the entity itself. For example, Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan are parts of their own separate and distinct polity. However, they are also members of the sovereign state of Iraq which is itself a polity, albeit one which is much less specific and as a result much less cohesive. Therefore, it is possible for an individual to belong to more than one polity at a time. Thomas Hobbes was a highly significant figure in the conceptualisation of polities, in particular of states. Hobbes considered notions of the state and the body politic in Leviathan, his most notable work. Polities do not necessarily need to be governments. A corporation, for instance, is capable of marshalling resources, has a governance structure, legal rights and exclusive jurisdiction over internal decision making. An ethnic community within a country or coast to coast entity may be a polity if they have sufficient organization and cohesive interests that can be furthered by such organization. See also Kokutai Nation Politeia Political system References External links Dictionary of the History of Ideas – analogy of the body politic (elaboration of correspondences between society or the state and the individual human body) Polity at the Encyclopædia Britannica Government

Libertarian socialism

Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism. With its roots in the Age of Enlightenment, libertarian socialism was first constituted as a tendency by the anti-authoritarian faction of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), during their conflict with the Marxist faction. Libertarian socialism quickly spread throughout Europe and the American continent, reaching its height during the early stages of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and particularly during the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Its defeat during these revolutions led to its brief decline, before its principles were resurrected by the New Left and new social movements of the late 20th century. While its key principles of decentralisation, workers' control and mutual aid are generally shared across the many schools of libertarian socialism, differences have emerged over the questions of revolutionary spontaneity, reformism, and whether to prioritise the abolition of the state or of capitalism. Political principles Libertarian socialism strives for a free and equal society, aiming to transform work and everyday life. Broadly defined, libertarian socialism encapsulates any political ideology that favours workers' control of the means of production and the replacement of capitalism with a system of cooperative economics, or common ownership. Libertarian socialists tend to see the working class as agents of social revolution, reject representative democracy and electoralism, and advocate for self-organisation and direct action as means to engage in class conflict. Anti-authoritarianism Libertarian socialism has a grassroots and direct democratic approach to socialism, rejecting parliamentarism and bureaucracy respectively. Libertarian socialists advocate the empowerment of individuals to control their own lives and encourage them to voluntarily cooperate with each other, rather than allow themselves to be controlled by a state. Libertarian socialists therefore uphold civil liberties such as freedom of choice, freedom of expression and freedom of thought. In contrast to authoritarian forms of socialism, libertarian socialism rejects state ownership and centralisation. Instead it upholds a decentralised model of self-governance, envisioning free association based on co-operative or participatory economics. Some libertarian socialists see such systems as complementary to statism, while others hold them to be an alternative to the state. Libertarian socialists tend to reject the view that political institutions such as the state represent an inherently good, or even neutral, power. Some libertarian socialists, such as Peter Kropotkin, consider the state to be an inherent instrument of landlordism and capitalism, therefore opposing the state with equal intensity as they oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalism Libertarian socialism views corporate power as an institutional problem, rather than as a result of the influence of certain immoral individuals. It thus opposes capitalism, which it sees as an economic system that upholds greed, the exploitation of labour and coercion, and calls for its overthrow in a social revolution. Libertarian socialists reject private property, as they consider capitalist property relations to be incompatible with freedom. Instead, libertarian socialism upholds individual self-ownership, as well as the collective ownership of the means of production. In the place of capitalism, libertarian socialists favour an economic system based on workers' control of production, advocating for a system of cooperative economics, or common ownership. They also advocate for workers' self-management, as they consider workers able to cooperate productively without supervisors, whether appointed by employers or by the state. They also tend to see free trade as inevitably resulting in the redistribution of income and wealth from workers to their corporate employers. They advocate for the elimination of social and economic inequality through the coercive expropriation of property from the wealthy. History The roots of libertarian socialism extend back to the classical radicalism of the early modern period, claiming the English Levellers and the French Encyclopédistes as their intellectual forerunners, and admiring figures of the Age of Enlightenment such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. According to Mikhail Bakunin and Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, while authoritarian socialism had its origins in Germany, libertarian socialism was born in France. The modern foundations of libertarian socialism lay in the utopian socialism expounded by Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and Henri de Saint-Simon, who envisioned a democratic socialism guided by communitarianism, moralism and feminism. Emergence Libertarian socialism first emerged from the anti-authoritarian faction of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), after it was expelled from the organisation by the Marxist faction at the Hague Congress of 1872. The libertarian socialist Mikhail Bakunin had rejected Karl Marx's calls for a "dictatorship of the proletariat", as he predicted it would only create a new ruling class, composed of a privileged minority, which would use the state to oppress the working classes. He concluded that: "no dictatorship can have any other aim than to perpetuate itself, and it can only give rise to and instill slavery in the people that tolerates it." Marxists responded to this by insisting on the eventual "withering away of the state", in which society would transition from dictatorship to anarchy, in an apparent attempt to synthesise authoritarian and libertarian forms of socialism. This put libertarian socialists into direct competition with social democrats and communists for influence over left-wing politics, in a contest which lasted for over fifty years. Libertarian socialism proved attractive to British writers such as Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, and William Morris, the latter of whom developed a kind of libertarian socialism based in a strong critique of civilisation, which he aimed to overthrow and replace with what he called a "beautiful society". Morris drove the development of impossibilism, which became increasingly concerned with the bureaucratisation and moderation of the socialist movement, leading to the establishment of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. By the early 20th century, libertarian socialists had gained a leading influence over the left-wing in the Netherlands, France and Italy and went on to play major roles in the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. In India, the libertarian socialist tradition was represented in the early twentieth century anti-colonial movement by Bhagat Singh. Russian Revolution Russian libertarian socialists, including anarchists, populists and left socialist-revolutionaries, led the opposition to the Tsarist autocracy throughout the late-19th century. They created a network of both clandestine and legal organisations throughout Russia, with the aim of overthrowing the Russian nobility and bringing land under the common ownership of the mir. Their agitation for land reform in the Russian countryside culminated with the establishment of rural soviets during the 1905 Revolution. Anarchists also organised among the urban proletariat, forming clandestine factory committees that proved more attractive to revolution-minded workers than the more reformist trade unions favoured by the Bolsheviks. During the 1917 Revolution, in which libertarian socialists played a leading role, the Bolsheviks changed tack and adopted elements of the libertarian socialist programme in their appeals to the workers. But by 1919, the new Bolshevik government had come to view the libertarian socialists as a threat to their power and moved to eliminate their influence. Libertarian socialist organisations were banned and many of their members were arrested, deported to Siberia or executed by the Cheka. The Revolutions of 1917–1923 ended in defeat for the libertarian socialists, with either the social democrats, the Bolsheviks or nationalists rising to power. Libertarian socialists responded by reevaluating their positions, emphasising mass organisation over intellectual vanguardism and revolutionary spontaneity over substitutionism. They also came to conceive the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a form of class power, rather than as the dictatorship of a political party. Many Marxists of the period were attracted to this position, including Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Antonie Pannekoek in the Netherlands, Sylvia Pankhurst in Britain, György Lukács in Hungary and Antonio Gramsci in Italy. Spanish Revolution Libertarian socialism reached its apex of popularity with the Spanish Revolution of 1936, during which libertarian socialists led "the largest and most successful revolution against capitalism to ever take place in any industrial economy". In Spain, traditional forms of self-management and common ownership dated back to the 15th century. The Levante, where collective self-management of irrigation was commonplace, became the hotbed of anarchist collectivisation. Building on this traditional collectivism, from 1876, the Spanish libertarian socialist movement grew through sustained agitation and the establishment of alternative institutions that culminated in the Spanish Revolution. During this period, a series of workers' congresses, first convoked by the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA, debated and refined proposals for the construction of a libertarian socialist society. Over several decades, resolutions from these congresses formed the basis of a specific program on a range of issues, from the structure of communes and the post-revolutionary economy to libertarian cultural and artistic initiatives. These proposals were published in the pages of widely distributed libertarian socialist periodicals, such as Solidaridad Obrera and Tierra y Libertad, which each circulated tens of thousands of copies. By the outbreak of the revolution, the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) enjoyed widespread popularity, counting 1.5 million members within its ranks. During the revolution, the means of production were brought under workers' control and worker cooperatives formed the basis for the new economy. According to Gaston Leval, the CNT established an agrarian federation in the Levante that encompassed 78% of Spain's most arable land. The regional federation was populated by 1,650,000 people, 40% of whom lived on the region's 900 agrarian collectives, which were self-organised by peasant unions. Although industrial and agricultural production was at its highest in the anarchist-controlled areas of the Spanish Republic, and the anarchist militias displayed the strongest military discipline, liberals and Communists alike blamed the "sectarian" libertarian socialists for the defeat of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. These charges have been disputed by contemporary libertarian socialists, such as Robin Hahnel and Noam Chomsky, who have accused such claims of lacking substantial evidence. Decline Following the defeat of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, libertarian socialism fell into decline. Left-wing politics throughout the world came to be dominated either by social democracy or Marxism-Leninism, which attained power in a number of countries and thus had the means to support their ideological allies. In contrast, Hahnel argues, libertarian socialists were not able to gain influence within the labour movement. At a time when reformist trade unions were consistently winning concessions, the libertarian socialists' anti-reformist message gained little traction. Their platform of workers' self-management also failed to appeal to industrial workers. Until the 1960s, libertarian socialists were limited mostly to making critiques of authoritarian socialism and capitalism, although Hahnel asserts that these arguments were largely overshadowed by those from neoconservatives and Marxists respectively. New Left Libertarian socialist themes received a revival during the 1960s, when it was reconstituted as part of the nascent New Left. This revival occurred largely unconsciously, as new leftists were often unaware of their libertarian socialist predecessors. The concepts of grassroots democracy, workers' control, solidarity and autonomy were thus reinvented by the new generation. They also picked up the principles of decentralisation, participatory democracy and mutual aid. These libertarian socialist themes drove the growth of the New Left, which by this point was disillusioned by the mainstream social democratic and Marxist-Leninist political groupings, due to the capitalistic tendencies of the former and the rigid authoritarianism of the latter. Sociologist C. Wright Mills, who displayed strong libertarian socialist tendencies in his appeals to the New Left, reformulated Marxism for the modern age in his work on The Power Elite. Wilhelm Reich's Freudo-Marxist theses on the authoritarian personality were also rediscovered by the New Left, who developed his programme for individual self-governance into a libertarian system of education used by the Summerhill School. Drawing on the Freudo-Marxist conception of civilisation as "organised domination", Herbert Marcuse developed a critique of alienation in modern Western societies, concluding that creativity and political dissent had been undermined by social repression. Meanwhile, Lewis Mumford published denunciations of the military-industrial complex and Paul Goodman advocated for decentralisation. In the process, the new generation of Marxists gravitated towards libertarian tendencies, sometimes closely resembling anarchism. Following on from Marcuse, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall all adopted forms of "libertarian Marxism", opposed to the bureaucracy and parliamentarism of statist tendencies. A specific and explicit libertarian socialist tendency also began to emerge. While some more libertarian Marxists adopted the term in order to distinguish themselves from authoritarian socialists, anarchists began calling themselves "libertarian socialist" in order to avoid the negative connotations associated with anarchism. The libertarian socialist Daniel Guérin specifically attempted to synthesise anarchism and Marxism into a single tendency, which inspired the growth of the French libertarian communist movement. For a time, even the American anarcho-capitalist theorist Murray Rothbard attempted to make common cause with libertarian socialists, but later shifted away from socialism and towards right-wing populism. Many libertarian socialists of this period were particularly influenced by the analysis of Cornelius Castoriadis and his group Socialisme ou Barbarie. This new generation included the non-vanguardist Marxist organisation Facing Reality, the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity, and the Australian councilists of the Self-Management Group. Some of this new generation of libertarian socialists also joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), swelling the old union's numbers, organising agricultural workers and launching a new journal, The Rebel Worker. This libertarian socialist milieu, with their criticisms of democratic centralism and trade unionism, and their advocacy of workers' self-management and council democracy, went on to inspire the French situationists and Italian autonomists. Of the figures in the New Left, the American linguist Noam Chomsky became the most prominent spokesperson for libertarian socialism. Inspired by the humanism of Bertrand Russell, the individualism of Wilhelm von Humboldt and the syndicalism of Rudolf Rocker, Chomsky championed a libertarian socialism that upheld individual liberty and self-ownership. Chomsky has been outspoken advocate of anti-authoritarianism, opposing limits on individual freedoms by the state. He has also focused much of his libertarian socialist critique on mass media in the United States, due to its role in the military-industrial complex. While most sections of the New Left expressed a form of libertarian socialism, others were instead being inspired by the Cuban and Chinese Communist Revolutions to embrace forms of authoritarian socialism such as Maoism–Third Worldism. As such, according to Hahnel, the New Left failed to form a coherent ideological program or establish lasting support to carry forward the momentum of the late 1960s, resulting in many dropping out of activism altogether. New social movements A minority from the New Left continued their radical activism within the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, becoming involved in second-wave feminism, the gay liberation movement, environmental movement and eventually the anti-globalization movement. In this period, many librertarian socialists, such as Murray Bookchin, Cornelius Castoriadis, Andre Gorz, Ivan Illich, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, were committed to " in rethinking what socialism might come to mean in an age of ecological limit". According to Robin Hahnel, new social movements continued the New Left's tendency of failing to develop a "comprehensive libertarian socialist theory and practice". Libertarian socialist activism became focused on achieving practical reforms and theoretical developments centred around common "core values" such as economic democracy, economic justice and sustainable development, without building a coherent critique of capitalism. Activists from the 1970s and 1980s influenced by libertarian socialism did not advance coherent alternatives to markets and central planning, and had no reformist campaign. Eventually, Hahnel argues, they turned to traditional single-issue campaigns and abandoned their "big picture" libertarian socialist approach. These movements were somewhat successful in achieving their goals: the movements for gay and women's rights changed societal outlook on gender oppression; the anti-racist movement proved it necessary to tackle the social aspects of racialisation; the anti-imperialist movement reconceived of anti-imperialism outside of economic terms; and the environmentalist movement launched a wave of ecological defense and restoration. Together, Hahnel argues, they broke from the class reductionism prevalent in traditional forms of libertarian socialism, proving intersectional oppressions other than class also demanded attention. Through the new social movements, libertarian socialism developed an awareness of different aspects of oppression, beyond class analysis. Contemporary era Libertarian socialism again received a revival of interest in the wake of the fall of communism and concurrent rise of neoliberalism. It proved particularly attractive to people from the former Eastern Bloc, who saw it as an alternative both to western capitalism and Marxism-Leninism. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been two major experiments in libertarian socialism: the Zapatista uprising in Mexico and the Rojava Revolution in Syria. In reaction against the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatisation of indigenous lands by the Mexican state, in 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) rose up against the government, enabling the formation of a self-governing autonomous territory in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The Zapatistas have roundly rejected political sectarianism and ideological doctrine, including the state socialist model of seizing state power, with spokesman Subcomandante Marcos famously declaring "I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet." As such, they have commonly been characterised as libertarian socialist, or inspired by libertarian socialism. They have in turn become a source of inspiration for libertarian socialists, including the autonomist Marxists Harry Cleaver and John Holloway, as well as some anarchists. In 2012, the Rojava Revolution established the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES; or "Rojava") to put "libertarian socialist ideas ... into practice", and whose cantons present themselves as a "libertarian socialist alternative to the colonially established state boundaries in the Middle East." Various sources have drawn parallels between the Rojava Revolution and the Zapatista uprising of 1994 or the Spanish Revolution of 1936, and noted the influence of libertarian socialist Murray Bookchin, specifically his concept of libertarian municipalism, on the revolution. Libertarian socialist ideas have influenced some currents of the anti-austerity and new municipalist movements, such as Ada Colau's Barcelona en Comú party, in which they ally with democratic socialists. In Chile, there have been several libertarian socialist movements active since the 2010s in groups including Libertarian Left and the Broad Front (FA). Gabriel Boric founded Social Convergence in 2018, bringing together the Autonomist Movement, Libertarian Left and other libertarian socialist groups. Boric, who describes himself as libertarian socialist, was elected president in 2021. Notable tendencies Libertarian socialism encompasses both the libertarian wing of socialism and the socialist wing of libertarianism, including many different schools of thought under its banner. The most commonly cited tendencies of libertarian socialism are anarchist communism, anarcho-syndicalism and council communism. Other Marxist strands of libertarian socialism include Western Marxism, Bordigism and impossibilism. Additionally, utopian socialism, guild socialism, socialist feminism and social ecology, as well as various strands of the New Left, new social movements and contemporary anarchism, have been listed among the other wings of libertarian socialism. Anarchist The currents of classical anarchism that developed in the 19th century were committed to autonomy and freedom, decentralization, opposing hierarchy, and opposing the vanguardism of authoritarian socialism. In the 20th century, social anarchism emerged as a significant current of anarchism and explicitly identified as libertarian socialist. Anarcho-syndicalist Gaston Leval explained: "We therefore foresee a Society in which all activities will be coordinated, a structure that has, at the same time, sufficient flexibility to permit the greatest possible autonomy for social life, or for the life of each enterprise, and enough cohesiveness to prevent all disorder. [...] In a well-organised society, all of these things must be systematically accomplished by means of parallel federations, vertically united at the highest levels, constituting one vast organism in which all economic functions will be performed in solidarity with all others and that will permanently preserve the necessary cohesion". Significant thinkers in the anarchist tradition who are described as libertarian socialist include Colin Ward. Marxist A broad scope of economic and political philosophies that draw on the anti-authoritarian aspects of Marxism have been described as "Libertarian Marxism", a tendency which emphasises autonomy, federalism and direct democracy. Wayne Price identified it most closely with the tendency of autonomist Marxism and identified libertarian characteristics within council communism, the Johnson–Forest Tendency, the Socialisme ou Barbarie group and the Situationist International, contrasting them with orthodox Marxism, social democracy, and Marxism–Leninism. Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot have identified Rosa Luxemburg, Walter Benjamin, André Breton and Daniel Guérin as prominent figures of libertarian Marxism. Ojeili identifies William Morris, Daniel De Leon, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Korsch Anton Pannekoek, Roland Holst, Hermann Gorter, Sylvia Pankhurst, Antonio Gramsci, Grego Lukacs, Socialisme ou Barbarie, Henri Simon, Echanges et Mouvements and Paul Mattick as significant Marxian libertarian socialists. Democratic socialist There was a strong left-libertarian current in the British labour movement and the term "libertarian socialist" has been applied to a number of democratic socialists, including some prominent members of the British Labour Party. The Socialist League was formed in 1885 by William Morris and others critical of the authoritarian socialism of the Social Democratic Federation. It was involved in the new unionism, the rank-and-file union militancy of the 1880s–1890s, which anticipated syndicalism in some key ways (Tom Mann, a New Unionist leader, was one of the first British syndicalists). The Socialist League was dominated by anarchists by the 1890s. The Common Wealth Party was inspired by Christian socialism as well as libertarian socialism. Others in the tradition of the ILP and described as libertarian socialists included G. D. H. Cole (the founder of guild socialism and influenced by Morris), George Orwell, Michael Foot, Raymond Williams, and Tony Benn. Another is former Labour Party minister Peter Hain, who has written in support of libertarian socialism, identifying an axis involving a "bottom-up vision of socialism, with anarchists at the revolutionary end and democratic socialists [such as himself] at its reformist end" as opposed to the axis of state socialism with Marxist–Leninists at the revolutionary end and social democrats at the reformist end. Another recent mainstream Labour politician who has been described as a libertarian socialist is Robin Cook. Debates Reasons for decline American economist Robin Hahnel claimed that libertarian socialists "were by far the worst underachievers among 20th century anti-capitalists." He contrasted libertarian socialist failings with those of social democracy, arguing that while the latter had abandoned their principles of economic democracy and justice in favour of reformism, the former had proved incapable of sustaining anti-capitalist uprisings and largely ignored the importance of political and economic reform. Hahnel consequently suggested that, in the 21st century, libertarian socialists should work together with other anti-capitalist social movements, organize for reform without abandoning anti-capitalist principles and strive to build grassroots institutions of self-management, even if those projects are "imperfect". Priorities While most libertarian socialists consider it necessary to combat both economic and political power in tandem, regarding each as fundamental to the survival of the other, some consider it a priority to combat one or the other first. Some, such as Mikhail Bakunin and Alexander Berkman, considered capitalism to rely on the support and protection of the state. They thus concluded that if the state were to be abolished, capitalism would naturally dissolve in its wake. But others, including Noam Chomsky, believe that the state is only inherently oppressive because of its control by a plutocratic class and that "society is governed by those who own it". Chomsky holds that government, while not benign, can at least be held accountable, while corporate power is neither benign nor accountable. Though he holds the abolition of the state to be desirable, Chomsky considers the abolition of capitalism to be of greater urgency. See also Freiwirtschaft ("free economy"), idea based on the "natural economic order" Sociocracy, decentralized governance system based on consent developed in meeting circles Libertarianism, a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core principle References Bibliography Further reading External links Anarchism Anti-capitalism Anti-Stalinist left Communism Economic ideologies History of anarchism Socialism History of socialism Socialism Socialism Socialism Social anarchism Socialism

The Economist Democracy Index

The Democracy Index published by the Economist Group is an index measuring the quality of democracy across the world. This quantitative and comparative assessment is centrally concerned with democratic rights and democratic institutions. The methodology for assessing democracy used in this democracy index is according to Economist Intelligence Unit which is part of the Economist Group, a UK-based private company, which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped into five categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. The first Democracy Index report was published in 2006. Reports were published every two years until 2010 and annually thereafter. The index includes 167 countries and territories, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states. Other democracy indices with similar assessments of the state of democracy include V-Dem Democracy indices or Bertelsmann Transformation Index. Methodology As described in the report, the Democracy Index produces a weighted average based on the answers to 60 questions, each one with either two or three permitted answers. Most answers are experts' assessments. Some answers are provided by public-opinion surveys from the respective countries. In the case of countries for which survey results are missing, survey results for similar countries and expert assessments are used in order to fill in gaps. The questions are grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism civil liberties functioning of government political participation political culture Each answer is converted to a score, either 0 or 1, or for the three-answer questions, 0, 0.5 or 1. With the exceptions mentioned below, within each category, the scores are added, multiplied by ten, and divided by the total number of questions within the category. There are a few modifying dependencies, which are explained much more precisely than the main rule procedures. In a few cases, an answer yielding zero for one question voids another question; e.g., if the elections for the national legislature and head of government are not considered free (question 1), then the next question, "Are elections... fair?", is not considered, but automatically scored zero. Likewise, there are a few questions considered so important that a low score on them yields a penalty on the total score sum for their respective categories, namely: "Whether national elections are free and fair"; "The security of voters"; "The influence of foreign powers on government"; "The capability of the civil servants to implement policies". The five category indices, which are listed in the report, are then averaged to find the overall score for a given country. Finally, the score, rounded to two decimals, decides the regime-type classification of the country. The report discusses other indices of democracy, as defined, e.g., by Freedom House, and argues for some of the choices made by the team from the Economist Intelligence Unit. In this comparison, a higher emphasis is placed on the public opinion and attitudes, as measured by surveys, but on the other hand, economic living-standards are not weighted as one criterion of democracy (as seemingly some other investigators have done). The report is widely cited in the international press as well as in peer-reviewed academic journals. Definitions Full democracies are nations where civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and diverse and independent media. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning. Flawed democracies are nations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honoured but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics). These nations can have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance. Hybrid regimes are nations with regular electoral frauds, preventing them from being fair and free democracies. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opposition, non-independent judiciaries, widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anaemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance. Authoritarian regimes are nations where political pluralism is nonexistent or severely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meagre significance, infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair or free (including sham elections), the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and censorship and suppression of governmental criticism are commonplace. By regime type The following table indicates the number of nations and the percentage of world population for each type of regime. Some microstates are not considered in the calculation. List by region The following table lists the average of each country scored by geographic region, as defined by the Economist Democracy Index. The following table lists the number of countries in each of the four democracy classifications. List by country The following table shows each nation's score over the years. The regions are assigned by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and may differ from conventional classifications (for example, Turkey is grouped in Western Europe). North America Western Europe Central and Eastern Europe Latin America and the Caribbean Asia and Australasia Middle East and North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Components The following table shows the five parameters that made up the score of each nation in 2023 and the changes that had occurred since 2022. Unincluded countries Below is a list of every UN member state that is currently not included in the Democracy Index. Recent changes In 2016, the United States was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy; its score, which had been declining for some years, crossed the threshold from 8.05 in 2015 to 7.98 in 2016. The report stated that this was caused by myriad factors dating back to at least the late 1960s which have eroded Americans' trust in governmental institutions. Nigeria was also upgraded from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime. The 2017 Democracy Index registered, at the time, the worst year for global democracy since 2010–11. Asia was the region with the largest decline since 2016. Venezuela was downgraded from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime. In China, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), further entrenched his power by writing his contribution to the CCP's ideology, dubbed Xi Jinping Thought, into the party's constitution. Moldova was downgraded from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime as a result of problematic elections. By contrast, Armenia was re-upgraded from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime as a result of constitutional changes that shifted power from the presidency to parliament. In 2017, the Gambia was upgraded again from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime after Yahya Jammeh, who was president from 1996 to 2017, was defeated by Adama Barrow, an opposition candidate in the 2016 presidential elections. In 2019, France, Portugal and Chile were upgraded from flawed democracies to full democracies. In fact, this was not a new experience for the former two, which suffered from the eurozone crisis many years before. By contrast, Malta was downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy. Thailand and Albania were upgraded from hybrid regimes to flawed democracies. Algeria was upgraded again from an authoritarian regime to a hybrid regime. In 2020, Taiwan was upgraded from flawed democracy to full democracy following reforms in the judiciary, and soared to 11th position from its previous position at 33. Japan and South Korea were also upgraded again to a full democracy, while France and Portugal were once again relegated to flawed democracies. Hong Kong was downgraded from a flawed democracy to a hybrid regime. Algeria was downgraded again from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime. The Economist Intelligence Unit noted that democracy "was dealt a major blow in 2020". Almost 70% of countries covered by the Democracy Index recorded a decline in their overall score, as most of them imposed lockdowns and other restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to some arresting journalists and citizens accused of spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The global average score fell to its lowest level since the index began in 2006. In 2021, both the global and regional average scores continued downward trends, with the exception of the Central and Eastern Europe region. Spain and Chile were downgraded from full democracies to flawed democracies, while Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Tunisia were downgraded from flawed democracies to hybrid regimes. Haiti, Lebanon, and Kyrgyzstan were downgraded from hybrid regimes to authoritarian regimes. In addition, Moldova, Montenegro, and North Macedonia were upgraded from hybrid regimes to flawed democracies, whereas Mauritania was upgraded from authoritarian to hybrid regime. For the first time, two countries displaced North Korea as the lowest-ranked states in the Democracy Index – in Myanmar, the elected government was overthrown in a military coup, and protests were suppressed by the junta, which ultimately resulted in its score going down by 2.02 points; Afghanistan, as a result of the 2021 Taliban offensive and subsequent takeover of government, registered the lowest score of any state ever recorded on the Democracy Index at 0.32. In 2022, the global average score stagnated, with the lifting of COVID-related restrictions being largely canceled out by other negative developments globally. In 2023, the global average score deteriorated further, with most declines occurring in authoritarian and hybrid regimes, with the former becoming more entrenched and the latter struggling to democratize. The threshold for each color has also been changed from greater than the integer to greater than or equal to. Criticism Investment analyst Peter Tasker has criticised the Democracy Index for lacking transparency and accountability beyond the numbers. To generate the index, the Economist Intelligence Unit has a scoring system in which various experts are asked to answer 60 questions and assign each reply a number, with the weighted average deciding the ranking. However, the final report does not indicate what kinds of experts, nor their number, nor whether the experts are employees of the Economist Intelligence Unit or independent scholars, nor the nationalities of the experts. See also Democracy Ranking Corruption Perceptions Index Democracy-Dictatorship Index Democracy promotion Gallagher index Notes References Democracy promotion International rankings Economist Intelligence Unit

State capacity

State capacity is the ability of a government to accomplish policy goals, either generally or in reference to specific aims. More narrowly, state capacity often refers to the ability of a state to collect taxes, enforce law and order, and provide public goods. A state that lacks capacity is defined as a fragile state or, in a more extreme case, a failed state. Higher state capacity has been strongly linked to long-term economic development, as state capacity can establish law and order, private property rights, and external defense, as well as support development by establishing a competitive market, transportation infrastructure, and mass education. State capacity can be measured by Government effectiveness index and government competitiveness and relates to political efficacy. Categorisation Based on a myriad of typologies proposed by authors and scholars in the social sciences field (including, but not limited to, Weber, Bourdieu and Mann), Centeno et al. advance that it is possible to break down the concept of "state capacity" into four different types or categories as shown below: 1) Territorial: it is related to the traditional Weberian concept of monopoly over the means of violence and makes us think of the state as a disciplinary body. This type of state authority or capability is purportedly the simplest to exercise because all that is needed to impose the desired order is the acquisition and use of a sufficient amount of relative coercive force. This power is wielded in two different fronts: firstly, vis a vis other states defining sovereignty and secondly, against internal or domestic opposition. 2) Economic: it entails two distinct but frequently related processes. First, this is about the state guaranteeing the society's general prosperity by consolidating an economic space through the development of a national market alongside the physical and legal infrastructure necessary to support the integration of that domestic economy into a global system of exchange. The ability to direct and appropriate resources through the creation of a productive fiscal system is the second facet of the economic capacity. 3) Infrastructural: it refers to the ability to process information, create organisational structures, and maintain transportation and communication systems. 4) Symbolic: although of much more ambiguous nature than the other categories, it is defined as the monopoly over the judgment of truth claims. In other words, this category is linked to the state capacity to transform what are diffuse social rituals and practices of conformity to authority into an objectified and bureaucratic process. Risk factor for violence The risk of civil war increases when relational state capacity is low, meaning the state has less control over its subjects than outsiders, or challengers to its domain (the monopoly of violence). The political majority is more likely to instigate a genocide when threatened with state failure. States with strong social control can enforce their own policies and deter membership in alternate rebel organizations. In some parts of the world, like Africa, some ethnic groups may be more distant from the capital but have a high level of internal connectedness. This type of scenario may reduce central social control, presenting an elevated risk of civil conflict and armed violence in Africa. Many scholars have argued that the lack of social control in Africa is a risk factor for violence. Applications There are multiple dimensions of state capacity, as well as varied indicators of state capacity. In studies that use state capacity as a causal variable, it has frequently been measured as the ability to tax, provide public goods, enforce property rights, achieve economic growth or hold a monopoly on the use of force within a territory. State capacity is distinct from political control, as the latter refers to the tactics that states use to gain compliance from society. The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) determined that basic state capacities are to Assist in the acquisition of new technologies Mobilize and channel resources to productive sectors Enforce standards and regulations Establish social pacts Fund deliver and regulate services and social programmes States must be able to create the Political Capacity to address the extent to which the necessary coalitions or political settlements can be built Resource Mobilization Capacity to generate resources for investment and social development Allocate Resources To Productive And Welfare-Enhancing Sectors State formation State capacity may involve an expansion of the state's information-gathering abilities. In processes of state-building, states began implementing a regular and reliable census, the regular release of statistical yearbooks, and civil and population registers, as well as establishing a government agency tasked with processing statistical information. Mark Dincecco distinguishes between state capacity (the state's ability to accomplish its intended actions) and "effective statehood" (the political arrangements that enable the state to best accomplish its intended actions). He argues that fiscal centralization and institutional impartiality are key to effective statehood. See also State (polity) State formation State building Capacity-building Enforcement Further reading Müller-Crepon, C. (2021). "State reach and development in Africa since the 1960s: New data and analysis." Political Science Research and Methods. Kocher, Matthew Adam (2010). "State Capacity as a Conceptual Variable". Yale Journal of International Affairs. References Comparative politics Political science terminology

Macrosociology

Macrosociology is a large-scale approach to sociology, emphasizing the analysis of social systems and populations at the structural level, often at a necessarily high level of theoretical abstraction. Though macrosociology does concern itself with individuals, families, and other constituent aspects of a society, it does so in relation to larger social system of which such elements are a part. The approach is also able to analyze generalized collectivities (e.g. "the city", "the church"). In contrast, microsociology focuses on the individual social agency. Macrosociology, however, deals with broad societal trends that can later be applied to smaller features of society, or vice versa. To differentiate, macrosociology deals with issues such as war as a whole; 'distress of Third-World countries'; poverty on a national/international level; and environmental deprivation, whereas microsociology analyses issues such as the individual features of war (e.g. camaraderie, one's pleasure in violence, etc.); the role of women in third-world countries; poverty's effect on "the family"; and how immigration impacts a country's environment. A "society" can be considered as a collective of human populations that are politically autonomous, in which members engage in a broad range of cooperative activities. The people of Germany, for example, can be deemed "a society", whereas people with German heritage as a whole, including those who populate other countries, would not be considered a society, per se. Theoretical strategies There are a number of theoretical strategies within contemporary macrosociology, though four approaches, in particular, have the most influence: Idealist Strategy: Attempts to explain the basic features of social life by reference to the creative capacity of the human mind. "Idealists believe that human uniqueness lies in the fact that humans attach symbolic meanings to their actions." Materialist Strategy: Attempts to explain the basic features of human social life in terms of the practical, material conditions of their existence, including the nature of a physical environment; the level of technology; and the organization of an economic system. Functionalist Strategy (or structural functionalism): Functionalism essentially states that societies are complex systems of interrelated and interdependent parts, and each part of a society significantly influences the others. Moreover, each part of society exists because it has a specific function to perform in contributing to the society as a whole. As such, societies tend toward a state of equilibrium or homeostasis, and if there is a disturbance in any part of the society then the other parts will adjust to restore the stability of the society as a whole. Conflict Theoretical Strategy (or conflict theory): Rejects the idea that societies tend toward some basic consensus of harmony in which the features of society work for everyone's good. Rather, the basic structure of society is determined by individuals and groups acquiring scarce resources to satisfy their own needs and wants, thus creating endless conflicts. Historical macrosociology Historical macrosociology can be understood as an approach that uses historical knowledge to try to solve some of the problems seen in the field of macrosociology. As globalization has affected the world, it has also influenced historical macrosociology, leading to the development of two distinct branches: Comparative and historical sociology (CHS): a branch of historical macrosociology that bases its analysis on states, searching for "generalizations about common properties and principles of variation among instances across time and space." As of recently, it has been argued that globalization poses a threat to the CHS way of thinking because it often leads to the dissolution of distinct states. Political Economy of the World-Systems (PEWS): a branch of historical macrosociology that bases its analysis on the systems of states, searching for "generalizations about interdependencies among a system's components and of principles of variation among systemic conditions across time and space." Historical macrosociologists include: Charles Tilly: developed theory of CHS, in which analysis is based on national states. Immanuel Wallerstein: developed world systems theory, in which analysis is based on world capitalist systems. Linking micro- and macro-sociology Perhaps the most highly developed integrative effort to link micro- and macro-sociological phenomena is found in Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration, in which "social structure is defined as both constraining and enabling of human activity as well as both internal and external to the actor." Attempts to link micro and macro phenomena are evident in a growing body of empirical research. Such work appears to follow Giddens' view of the constraining and enabling nature of social structure for human activity and the need to link structure and action. "It appears safe to say that while macrosociology will always remain a central component of sociological theory and research, increasing effort will be devoted to creating workable models that link it with its microcounterpart." See also Base and superstructure Cliodynamics General systems theory Modernization theory Sociocybernetics Structure and agency Systems philosophy References Further reading Tilly, Charles. 1995. "Macrosociology Past and Future." In Newsletter of the Comparative & Historical Sociology 8(1&2):1,3–4. American Sociological Association. Francois, P., J. G. Manning, Harvey Whitehouse, Rob Brennan, et al. 2016. "A Macroscope for Global History. Seshat Global History Databank: A Methodological Overview." Digital Humanities Quarterly Journal 4(26). Methods in sociology

System D

System D is a manner of responding to challenges that require one to have the ability to think quickly, to adapt, and to improvise when getting a job done. The term gained wider popularity in the United States after appearing in the 2006 publication of Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits. Bourdain references finding the term in Nicolas Freeling's memoir, The Kitchen, about Freeling's years as a Grand Hotel cook in France. The term is a direct translation of French . The letter D refers to any one of the French nouns , or (French slang). The verbs and mean to make do, to manage, especially in an adverse situation. Basically, it refers to one's ability and need to be resourceful. In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell described the term as something the lowest-level kitchen workers, the s, wanted to be called, indicating that they were people who would get the job done, no matter what. In recent literature on the informal economy, System D is the growing share of the world's economy which makes up the underground economy, which has a projected GDP of $10 trillion. The informal economy is usually considered as one part of a dual economy. The concept of dual economy is where the economy is divided into two parts – the formal and the informal. The formal economy consists of all economic activities that operate within the official legal framework and are regulated by the government. In common parlance, it is understood as enterprises and citizens who pay taxes on all generated incomes. The reason the informal economy is described as a DIY economy or system D is because of the self-reliance of the members within this sector. Due to lack of documentation, such as proof of citizenship, tax ID number, proof of identity or proof of address, people working in this sector are usually left with no way to seek support from their governments. This means that they are unable to access formal institutions which require documentation, and forces them to be self-reliant. This is not to be confused with autarky or self-reliant economies. Economists define self-sufficiency or self-reliance as the state of not requiring any aid, support, interaction, or trade with the outside world. The term in different languages There are a range of terms in other languages describing similar circumstances. Examples for those are in German, in Swiss German, (Trick 3) in Finnish, in Afrikaans, to hack it in English, in European Portuguese, in Brazilian Portuguese, in Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi, in Swahili, in Tagalog and in Congolese French. See also Agorism Bricolage WIEGO References French slang Informal economy

Dimensions of globalization

Manfred Steger, professor of Global Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa argues that globalization has four main dimensions: economic, political, cultural, ecological, with ideological aspects of each category. David Held's book Global Transformations is organized around the same dimensions, though the ecological is not listed in the title. This set of categories relates to the four-domain approach of circles of social life, and Circles of Sustainability. Steger compares the current study of globalization to the ancient Buddhist parable of blind scholars and their first encounter with an elephant. Similar to the blind scholars, some globalization scholars are too focused on compacting globalization into a singular process and clashes over “which aspect of social life constitutes its primary domain” prevail. Dimensions Economic Economic globalization is the intensification and stretching of economic interrelations around the globe. It encompasses such things as the emergence of a new global economic order, the internationalization of trade and finance, the changing power of transnational corporations, and the enhanced role of international economic institutions. Political Political globalization is the intensification and expansion of political interrelations around the globe. Aspects of political globalization include the modern-nation state system and its changing place in today's world, the role of global governance, and the direction of our global political systems. Cultural Cultural globalization is the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe. Culture is a very broad concept and has many facets, but in the discussion on globalization, Steger means it to refer to “the symbolic construction, articulation, and dissemination of meaning.” Topics under this heading include discussion about the development of a global culture, or lack thereof, the role of the media in shaping our identities and desires, and the globalization of languages. Ecological Topics of ecological globalization include population growth, access to food, worldwide reduction in biodiversity, the gap between rich and poor as well as between the global North and global South, human-induced climate change, and global environmental degradation. Ideologies According to Steger, there are three main types of globalisms (ideologies that endow the concept of globalization with particular values and meanings): market globalism, justice globalism, and religious globalisms. Steger defines them as follows: Market globalism seeks to endow ‘globalization’ with free-market norms and neoliberal meanings. Justice globalism constructs an alternative vision of globalization based on egalitarian ideals of global solidarity and distributive justice. Religious globalisms struggle against both market globalism and justice globalism as they seek to mobilize a religious values and beliefs that are thought to be under severe attack by the forces of secularism and consumerism. These ideologies of globalization (or globalisms) then relate to broader imaginaries and ontologies. See also Cultural globalization Globalism Globalization References Notes Globalization

Political culture

Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture. Political culture is what the people, the voters, the electorates believe and do based on their understanding of the political system in which they have found themselves. These may be regarded as being bad or good placed side by side with global best practices or norms. Definition Gabriel Almond defines it as "the particular pattern of orientations toward political actions in which every political system is embedded". Lucian Pye's definition is that "Political culture is the set of attitudes, beliefs, and sentiments, which give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system". María Eugenia Vázquez Semadeni defines political culture as "the set of discourses and symbolic practices by means of which both individuals and groups articulate their relationship to power, elaborate their political demands and put them at stake." Analysis The limits of a particular political culture are based on subjective identity. The most common form of such identity today is the national identity, and hence nation states set the typical limits of political cultures. The socio-cultural system, in turn, gives meaning to a political culture through shared symbols and rituals (such as a national independence day) which reflect common values. This may develop into a civil religion. The values themselves can be more hierarchical or egalitarian, and will set the limits to political participation, thereby creating a basis for legitimacy. They are transmitted through socialization, and shaped by shared historical experiences which form the collective or national memory. Intellectuals will continue to interpret the political culture through political discourse in the public sphere. Indeed, elite political culture is more consequential than mass-level. Elements Trust is a major factor in political culture, as its level determines the capacity of the state to function. Postmaterialism is the degree to which political culture is concerned with issues which are not of immediate physical or material concern, such as human rights and environmentalism. Religion has also an impact on political culture. Classifications Different typologies of political culture have been proposed. Almond & Verba Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in The Civic Culture outlined three pure types of political culture based on level and type of political participation and the nature of people's attitudes toward politics: Parochial – Where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central government, and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by the state, distant and unaware of political phenomena. They have neither knowledge nor interest in politics. This type of political culture is in general congruent with a traditional political structure. Subject – Where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet it is on the "downward flow" side of the politics. In general congruent with a centralized authoritarian structure. Participant – Citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they are affected by it. The individual is oriented toward the system as a whole, to both the political and administrative structures and processes (to both the input and output aspects). In general congruent with a democratic political structure. Almond and Verba wrote that these types of political culture can combine to create the civic culture, which mixes the best elements of each. Elazar Daniel J. Elazar identified three kinds of political culture: Individualistic culture – In which politics is a marketplace between individuals seeking to maximize their self-interest, with minimal community involvement and opposition to the government, as well as a high degree of patronage. See also: Neopatrimonialism. Moralistic culture – Whereby government is seen as important and as a way to improve peoples' lives. Traditionalistic culture – One which seeks to preserve the status quo under which elites have all the power and citizen participation is not expected. Huntington Samuel P. Huntington classified political cultures according to civilizations on the basis of geography and history: Western civilization Japanese civilization Islamic civilization Hindu civilization Slavic-Orthodox civilization Latin American civilization Chinese civilization African civilization Inglehart Ronald Inglehart proposes that political culture can dictate political systems, and points out a correlation between Protestantism (or more generally societies with high Secular-Rational values and high Self Expression values on the Inglehart-Weltzel values map) and stable democratization. However, the recurrent post-elections clashes in largely protestant Sub-Saharan countries, such as Kenya or Uganda, shows that religious affiliations seem to poorly affect the political behaviour of populations. National political cultures Russia Russia is a low-trust society, with even the highest trusted institutions of church and the military having more distrustful than trusting citizens, and with low participation in civil society. This means that Russia has a weak civic political culture. Furthermore, the authoritarian traditions of Russia mean that there is little support for democratic norms such as tolerance of dissent and pluralism. Russia has a history of authoritarian rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin, who have engaged in massive repression of all potential political competitors, from the oprichnina to the Great Purge. The resulting political systems of Tsarist autocracy and Soviet communism had no space for independent institutions. United States The political culture of the United States was heavily influenced by the background of its early immigrants, as it is a settler society. Samuel P. Huntington identified American politics as having a "Tudor" character, with elements of English political culture of that period, such as common law, strong courts, local self-rule, decentralized sovereignty across institutions, and reliance on popular militias instead of a standing army, having been imported by early settlers. Another source of political culture was the arrival of Scotch-Irish Americans, who came from a violent region of Britain, and brought with them a strong sense of individualism and support for the right to bear arms. These settlers provided the support for Jacksonian democracy, which was a revolution of its time against the established elites, and remnants of which can still be seen in modern American populism. China The political culture of China is tied closely to political socialization, as children are indoctrinated into the collectivist perspective of the Chinese Communist Party. This inculcation is theorized to explain the delayed growth of secularism in Chinese culture, especially during the Cultural Revolution. Chinese political culture perceives the relationship between government and individuals to be a hierarchy. Because of this, there is little pushback from individuals during policy and regulation change. The political culture also shows a trend against confrontationality, which decreases the quantity and frequency of social conflict. Both of these qualities stem from traditional Chinese values embedded during the age of Confucianism. When the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1948, Mao Zedong unsuccessfully attempted to remove these traits from the culture, instead opting for revolutionary values and priorities. India Due to India's colonization by the British Empire, the contemporary political culture has been influenced by western ideas that were not present before. These influences include democracy and parliamentary systems, two institutions that stood ideologically opposite of the caste system that dictated society before. Because of India's multicultural demography, the political culture varies by group and region. India's successful democratization lead to power being given to both the urbanized and well-educated class who focused on national appeal, as well as more traditional, rural, and lower class political actors. In the modern era, the class system of India has begun to break down, and members of lower classes are now entering higher political and economic positions. This is especially true for lower class women, who historically have been excluded from such activities. See also Political culture of Canada Political culture of Germany Political culture of the United Kingdom Political culture of the United States References Further reading Almond, Gabriel A., Verba, Sidney The Civic Culture. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1965. Aronoff, Myron J. “Political Culture,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, eds., (Oxford: Elsevier, 2002), 11640. Axelrod, Robert. 1997. “The Dissemination of Culture: A Model with Local Convergence and Global Polarization.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41:203-26. Barzilai, Gad. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Bednar, Jenna and Scott Page. 2007. “Can Game(s) Theory Explain Culture? The Emergence of Cultural Behavior within Multiple Games” Rationality and Society 19(1):65-97. Clark, William, Matt Golder, and Sona Golder. 2009. Principles of Comparative Government. CQ Press. Ch. 7 Diamond, Larry (ed.) Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries. Greif, Avner. 1994. “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies.” The Journal of Political Economy 102(5): 912-950. Kertzer, David I. Politics and Symbols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Kertzer, David I. Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Kubik, Jan. The Power of Symbols Against The Symbols of Power. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Ch. 2 Laitin, David D. Hegemony and Culture. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. Igor Lukšič, Politična kultura. Ljubljana: The University of Ljubljana, 2006. Wilson, Richard "The Many Voices of Political Culture: Assessing Different Approaches," in World Politics 52 (January 2000), 246-73 Gielen, Pascal (ed.), 'No Culture, No Europe. On the Foundation of Politics'. Valiz: Amsterdam, 2015. Comparative politics Culture

Active citizenship

Active citizenship involves citizens having control over their daily lives as users of public services, allowing them to influence decisions, voice concerns, and engage with service provision. This includes both choice and voice, enabling citizens to impact service provision by participating in local policies, interacting with institutions, and expressing preferences. It encompasses activities in politics, workplaces, civil society, and private spheres. This concept emphasizes how citizens' interactions with staff, administrators, and politicians at different levels affect their ability to shape services according to their needs. Three dimensions are considered: choice, empowerment, and participation. Choice involves informed decisions about service use, empowerment allows individuals to control their lives as users, and participation includes engaging in policy processes and influencing services. Description Active citizenship or engaged citizenship refers to active participation of a citizen under the law of a nation discussing and educating themselves in politics and society, as well as a philosophy espoused by organizations and educational institutions which advocates that individuals, charitable organizations, and companies have certain roles and responsibilities to society and the environment. Active citizens may be involved in public advocacy and protest, working to effect change in their communities. Active citizenship can be seen as an articulation of the debate over rights versus responsibilities. If a body gives rights to the people under its remit, then those same people might have certain responsibilities to uphold. This would be most obvious at a country or nation-state level, but could also be of wider scope, such as the Internet (netizen) or Earth (global citizenship). The implication is that an active citizen fulfills both their rights and responsibilities in a balanced way. A potential problem with this concept is that although rights are often written down as part of the law, responsibilities are not as well defined, and there may be disagreements amongst the citizens as to what the responsibilities are. For example, in the United Kingdom, citizens have the right to free health care, but voting in elections is not compulsory, even though many people would define this as a responsibility. Writing a clear definition of responsibilities for an active citizen can be more problematic than writing a list of rights. For example, although voting might be considered a basic responsibility by many people, there are some who through disability or other issues are not able to participate fully in the voting process. An active citizen is someone who takes a role in the community; the term has been identified with volunteering by writers such as Jonathan Tisch, who wrote in the Huffington Post in 2010 advocating that busy Americans should try to help others, particularly by offering high-level professional expertise in such areas as banking, education, engineering, and technology to help the less fortunate. Active citizenship is considered a buzzword by somedue to its vague definition. Examples include volunteering, donating, and recycling. Developments in social media and media literacy have changed how scholars begin to look at, and define active citizenship. Active citizenship in politics can lead to an apparent consumption of the engaged person rather than offering people with an informed, active opinion. Social media sites let people spread information, and create events to provide opportunities for engaged citizenship. Social media and the internet provide a public access point to government affairs, and police, away from town hall meetings, creating communities with similar concerns to recognize the pitfalls of governments and government policies. Examples of active citizenship in education Due to concerns over such things as a lack of interest in elections (reflected by low voter turnout), the British Government has launched a citizenship education program. Citizenship education is now compulsory in UK schools up to 14 and is often available as an option beyond that age. In Scotland, UK, active citizenship has been one of the three major themes of community policy since The Osler Report (section 6.6) in 1998. The Scottish Government's 2009 guidelines for community learning and development, Working and Learning Together, has active citizenship as a target within other policy aims. Britain has a points-based immigration system, and in 2009 was considering a probationary period for newly admitted immigrants which would examine, in part, how well they were being so-called active citizens. In Denmark, active citizenship is part of the curriculum in Danish teacher's education. The course is defined as 36 lessons. In Canada, there is an Active Citizenship Course being run at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. It is a compulsory course that is delivered by the Language Studies Department to all students at the college. In the United States, writer Catherine Crier wondered in the Huffington Post about whether Americans had lost sight of Thomas Jefferson's sense of active citizenship. Crier lamented how Americans have tended to neglect participating in voluntary associations, and tend to live as "strangers apart from the rest", quoting Tocqueville. In contrast, writer Eboo Patel in Newsweek suggested that President Obama had a somewhat different sense of active citizenship, meaning strong families, a vibrant civic center in which persons of different faiths and secular backgrounds work together, with government acting as a "catalyst". Jose Antonio Vargas writes in his memoirs, Dear America: Notes from an Undocumented Citizen, that undocumented immigrants, who contribute to the cultural, social, and economic fabrics of their adopted countries, are and ought to be considered citizens of those countries, notwithstanding what immigration authorities call them. He calls this a "citizenship of participation". Further reading See also Common good Intentional living Junior Chamber International Life stance Liquid democracy Participatory democracy Notes and references External links Weblog entries on active citizenship Social influence Social philosophy Social responsibility

Vox populi

( ) is a Latin phrase (originally Vox populi, vox Dei -The voice of the people is the voice of the God) that literally means "voice of the people." It is used in English in the meaning "the opinion of the majority of the people." In journalism, vox pop or man on the street refers to short interviews with members of the public. Man on the street American television personality Steve Allen as the host of The Tonight Show further developed the "man on the street" interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that have become commonplace on late-night TV. Usually the interviewees are shown in public places, and supposed to be giving spontaneous opinions in a chance encounter – unrehearsed persons, not selected in any way. As such, journalists almost always refer to them as the abbreviated vox pop. In U.S. broadcast journalism, it is often referred to as a man on the street interview or MOTS. The results of such an interview are unpredictable at best, and therefore vox pop material is usually edited down very tightly. This presents difficulties of balance, in that the selection used ought to be, from the point of view of journalistic standards, a fair cross-section of opinions. Although the two can be quite often confused, a vox pop is not a form of a survey. Each person is asked the same question; the aim is to get a variety of answers and opinions on any given subject. Journalists are usually instructed to approach a wide range of people to get varied answers from different points of view. The interviewees should be of various ages, sexes, classes and communities so that the diverse views and reactions of the general people will be known. Generally, the vox pop question will be asked of different persons in different parts of streets or public places. But as an exception, in any specific topic or situation which is not concerned to general people, the question can be asked only in a specific group to know what the perception/reaction is of that group to the specific topic or issue; e.g., a question can be asked to a group of students about the quality of their education. With increasing public familiarity with the term, several radio and television programs have been named "vox pop" in allusion to this practice. Vox populi, vox Dei The Latin phrase , 'The voice of the people [is] the voice of the gods', is an old proverb. An early reference to the expression is in a letter from Alcuin of York to Charlemagne in . The full quotation from Alcuin reads: Writing in the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury refers to the saying as a "proverb". Of those who promoted the phrase and the idea, Archbishop of Canterbury Walter Reynolds brought charges against King Edward II in 1327 in a sermon "". Cultural references "Vox Populi" is a paper by Sir Francis Galton, first published in the 7 March 1907 issue of Nature, that demonstrates the "wisdom of the crowd" by a statistical analysis of the guesses from a weight-judging contest. A variant was used in the 1920 United States presidential election, in which the main candidates were Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox: "Cox or Harding, Harding or Cox? / You tell us, populi, you got the vox." In CollegeHumor's actual play Dungeons & Dragons show Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, Kingston Brown holds the title of "Vox Populi of New York City", the individual selected to be the voice of the people of New York, regarding matters involving magical forces from the Dream Realm. The "Vox Populi" are a faction in the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite as a communist revolutionary force led by Daisy Fitzroy against the tyrant Zachary Comstock. Vox Populi is referenced in the film V for Vendetta when V performs his alliterative speech for Evey. Sherlock Holmes, in the story "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", asks Watson to give judgment regarding a criminal, and after his choice to let him go, Sherlock quotes the phrase "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" and sends the criminal free. After his acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk conducted a poll asking whether or not he should reinstate the account of the former President Donald Trump. Upon the results of the poll, Musk tweeted "The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei." This poll stated "Reinstate former President Trump" and after 15,085,458 votes, resulted in 51.8% voting "Yes." Musk used the phrase, once again, in response to a poll he posted on Twitter on November 23, 2022. That poll asked, "Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?" After being active for one day, the results were 72.4% in favor of account amnesty. 3,162,112 accounts voted. To this, Musk tweeted "The people have spoken. Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei." See also List of Latin phrases Power to the people (slogan) Doxa References Broadcast journalism Democracy Latin words and phrases Latin political words and phrases Popular sovereignty fr:Micro-trottoir

Sources of law

Sources of law are the origins of laws, the binding rules that enable any state to govern its territory. The terminology was already used in Rome by Cicero as a metaphor referring to the "fountain" ("fons" in Latin) of law. Technically, anything that can create, change, or cancel any right or law is considered a source of law. The term "source of law" may sometimes refer to the sovereign or to the seat of power from which the law derives its validity. Legal theory usually classifies them into formal and material sources, although this classification is not always used consistently. Normally, formal sources are connected with what creates the law: statutes, case law, contracts, and so on. In contrast, material sources refer to the places where formal law can be found, such as the official bulletin or gazette where the legislator publishes the country's laws, newspapers, and public deeds. Jurisprudence The perceived authenticity of a source of law may rely on a choice of jurisprudence analysis. Tyrants such as Kim Jong-un may wield De facto power, but critics would say he does not exercise power from a de jure (or legitimate) source. After WWII it was not a valid defence at Nuremberg to say "I was only obeying orders", and the victors hanged Nazis for breaching "universal and eternal standards of right and wrong". Over decades and centuries, principles of law have been derived from customs. The divine right of kings, natural and legal rights, human rights, civil rights, and common law are early unwritten sources of law. Canon law and other forms of religious law form the basis for law derived from religious practices and doctrines or from sacred texts; this source of law is important where there is a state religion. Historical or judicial precedent and case law can modify or even create a source of law. Legislation, rules, and regulations form the tangible source of laws which are codified and enforceable. Sources in different legal systems In civil law systems, the sources of law include the legal codes, such as the civil code or the criminal code, and custom; in common law systems there are also several sources that combine to form "the law". Civil law systems often absorb ideas from the common law and vice-versa. Scotland, for instance, has a hybrid form of law, as does South Africa, whose law in an amalgam of common law, civil law and tribal law. A state may comply with international law, it may have a written or federal constitution, or it may have regional legislature, but normally it is the central national legislature that is the ultimate source of law. While a written constitution may seem to be the prime source of law, the state legislature may amend its constitution provided certain rules are followed. International law may take precedence over national law, but international law is mainly made up of conventions and treaties that have been ratified; and anything that can be ratified may be denounced later by the national parliament. Although local authorities may feel that they have a democratic mandate to pass by-laws, the legislative power they wield has been delegated by parliament; and what parliament gives, parliament make later take away. In England, the archetypal common law country, there is a hierarchy of sources, as follows: Legislation (primary and secondary) The case law rules of common law and equity Parliamentary conventions General customs Books of authority International sources International treaties Governments may sign International Conventions and Treaties; but these normally become binding only when they are ratified. Most conventions come into force only when a stated number of signatories have ratified the final text. An international convention may be incorporated into a statute (e.g. Hague-Visby Rules in Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1971; e.g. the Salvage Convention in the Merchant Shipping Act 1995). The Council of Europe’s European Convention on Human Rights is enforced by the ECHR in Strasbourg. European Union law The European Union is special example of international law. European nations that join the EU thereby adopt all EC Law to date (the acquis communautaire), namely: treaty provisions, regulations, directives, decisions, and precedents. Member States become subject to "Brussels" and to the binding precedent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (or CJEU) in Luxembourg. However, Brussels may only act and legislate in accordance with the EU treaties, and the CJEU's supremacy applies only in matters of EU law. National sources Legislation Legislation is the prime source of law and consists in the declaration of legal rules by a competent authority. Legislation can have many purposes: to regulate, to authorize, to enable, to proscribe, to provide funds, to sanction, to grant, to declare or to restrict. A parliamentary legislature frames new laws, such as Acts of Parliament, and amends or repeals old laws. The legislature may delegate law-making powers to lower bodies. In the UK, such delegated legislation includes Statutory Instruments, Orders in Council, & Bye-laws. Delegated legislation may be open to challenge for irregularity of process; and the legislature usually has the right to withdraw delegated powers if it sees fit. Most legislatures have their powers restricted by the nation's Constitution, and Montesquieu's theory of the separation of powers typically restricts a legislature's powers to legislation. Although the legislature has the power to legislate, it is the courts who have the power to interpret statutes, treaties and regulations. Similarly, although parliaments have the power to legislate, it is usually the executive who decides on the legislative programmed. The procedure is usually that a bill is introduced to Parliament, and after the required number of readings, committee stages and amendments, the bill gains approval and becomes an Act. Case Law Judicial precedent (aka: case law, or judge-made law) is based on the doctrine of stare decisive, and mostly associated with jurisdictions based on the English common law, but the concept has been adopted in part by Civil Law systems. Precedent is the accumulated principles of law derived from centuries of decisions. Judgments passed by judges in important cases are recorded and become significant source of law. When there is no legislature on a particular point which arises in changing conditions, the judges depend on their own sense of right and wrong and decide the disputes from first principles. Authoritative precedent decisions become a guide in subsequent cases of a similar nature. The dictionary of English law defines a judicial precedent as a judgment or decision of a court of law cited as an authority for deciding a similar state of fact in the same manner or on the same principle or by analogy. Another definition declares precedent to be," a decision in a court of justice cited in support of a proposition for which it is desired to contend". Compared to other sources of law, precedent has the advantage of flexibility and adaptability, and may enable a judge to apply "justice" rather than "the law". Equity (England only) Equity is a source of law peculiar to England and Wales. Equity is the case law developed by the (now defunct) Court of Chancery. Equity prevails over common law, but its application is discretionary. Equity's main achievements are: trusts, charities, probate, & equitable remedies. There are a number of equitable maxims, such as: "He who comes to equity must come with clean hands". Parliamentary Conventions (UK mainly) (not to be confused with International Conventions) Parliamentary Conventions are not strict rules of law, but their breach may lead to breach of law. They typically are found within the English legal system, and they help compensate for the UK's lack of a single written constitution. Typically, parliamentary conventions govern relationships, such as that between the House of Lords and the House of Commons; between the monarch and Parliament; and between Britain and its colonies. For instance, after the Finance Act 1909, the House of Lords lost its power to obstruct the passage of bills, and now may only delay them. The prerogative powers are subject to convention, and in 2010, the monarch's power to dissolve Parliament was abolished. Britain's tradition with its colonies is that they are self-governing (although, historically, rarely with universal suffrage), and that the mother-country should stay aloof. Customs (England & Commonwealth Nations) A "General Custom" as a source of law is not normally written, but if a practice can be shown to have existed for a very long time, such as "since time immemorial' (1189 AD), it becomes a source of law. A "Particular Custom" (or "private custom") may arise and become a right with the force of law when a person, or a group of persons has from long usage obtained a recognized usage, such as an easement. Books of Authority (England mainly) Up until the 20th century, English judges felt able to examine certain "books of authority" for guidance, and both Coke and Blackstone were frequently cited. This old practice of citing only authors who are dead has gone; nowadays notable legal authors may be cited, even if they are still alive. See also Jurisprudence Legitimacy Legal socialization Opinio juris sive necessitatis Sources of international law References Notes

Representative democracy

Representative democracy, electoral democracy or indirect democracy is a type of democracy where representatives are elected by the public. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy: for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy), Germany (a federal parliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic). This is different from direct democracy, where the public votes directly on laws or policies, rather than representatives. Political parties often become prominent in representative democracy if electoral systems require or encourage voters to vote for political parties or for candidates associated with political parties (as opposed to voting for individual representatives). Some political theorists (including Robert Dahl, Gregory Houston, and Ian Liebenberg) have described representative democracy as polyarchy. Representative democracy can be organized in different ways including both parliamentary and presidential systems of government. Elected representatives typically form a legislature (such as a parliament or congress), which may be composed of a single chamber (unicameral), two chambers (bicameral), or more than two chambers (multicameral). Where two or more chambers exist, their members are often elected in different ways. The power of representatives is usually curtailed by a constitution (as in a constitutional democracy or a constitutional monarchy) or other measures to balance representative power: An independent judiciary, which may have the power to declare legislative acts unconstitutional (e.g. constitutional court, supreme court). The constitution may also provide for some deliberative democracy (e.g., Royal Commissions) or direct popular measures (e.g., initiative, referendum, recall elections). However, these are not always binding and usually require some legislative action—legal power usually remains firmly with representatives. In some cases, a bicameral legislature may have an "upper house" that is not directly elected, such as the Senate of Canada, which was in turn modeled on the British House of Lords. Some political theorists, such as Edmund Burke, believe that part of the duty of a representative is not simply to follow the wishes of the electorate but also to use their own judgment in the exercise of their powers, even if their views are not reflective of those of a majority of voters. A representative who chooses to execute the wishes of his or her constituents acts as a delegate. If the representative chooses to use his or her best judgment and knowledge in making decisions, even when the constituents do not fully agree with the decision, then the representative acts as a trustee. History The Roman Republic was the first known state in the Western world to have a representative government, despite taking the form of a direct government in the Roman assemblies. The Roman model of governance would inspire many political thinkers over the centuries, and today's modern representative democracies imitate more the Roman than the Greek model, because it was a state in which supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and which had an elected or nominated leader. Representative democracy is a form of democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives; as opposed to direct democracy, a form of democracy in which people vote on policy initiatives directly. A European medieval tradition of selecting representatives from the various estates (classes, but not as we know them today) to advise/control monarchs led to relatively wide familiarity with representative systems inspired by Roman systems. In Britain, Simon de Montfort is remembered as one of the fathers of representative government for holding two famous parliaments. The first, in 1258, stripped the king of unlimited authority and the second, in 1265, included ordinary citizens from the towns. Later, in the 17th century, the Parliament of England implemented some of the ideas and systems of liberal democracy, culminating in the Glorious Revolution and passage of the Bill of Rights 1689. Widening of the voting franchise took place through a series of Reform Acts in the 19th and 20th centuries. The American Revolution led to the creation of a new Constitution of the United States in 1787, with a national legislature based partly on direct elections of representatives every two years, and thus responsible to the electorate for continuance in office. Senators were not directly elected by the people until the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Women, men who owned no property, and Black people, and others not originally given voting rights, in most states eventually gained the vote through changes in state and federal law in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Until it was repealed by the Fourteenth Amendment following the Civil War, the Three-Fifths Compromise gave a disproportionate representation of slave states in the House of Representatives relative to the voters in free states. In 1789, Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the National Convention was elected by all males in 1792. Universal male suffrage was re-established in France in the wake of the French Revolution of 1848. Representative democracy came into general favour particularly in post-industrial revolution nation states where large numbers of citizens evinced interest in politics, but where technology and population figures remained unsuited to direct democracy. Many historians credit the Reform Act 1832 with launching modern representative democracy in the United Kingdom. Globally, a majority of governments in the world are representative democracies, including constitutional monarchies and republics with strong representative branches. Research on representation democracy Separate but related, and very large, bodies of research in political philosophy and social science investigate how and how well elected representatives, such as legislators, represent the interests or preferences of one or another constituency. The empirical research shows that representative systems tend to be biased towards the representation of more affluent classes to the detriment of the population at large. Criticisms In his book Political Parties, written in 1911, Robert Michels argues that most representative systems deteriorate towards an oligarchy or particracy. This is known as the iron law of oligarchy.<ref>Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (1911, 1925; 1970). Translated as Sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna : studi sulle tendenze oligarchiche degli aggregati politici, from the German original by Dr. Alfredo Polledro, revised and expanded (1912). Translated, from the Italian, by Eden and Cedar Paul as Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy'" (Hearst's International Library Co., 1915; Free Press, 1949; Dover Publications, 1959); republished with an introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset (Crowell-Collier, 1962; Transaction Publishers, 1999, ); translated in French by S. Jankélévitch, Les partis politiques. Essai sur les tendances oligarchiques des démocraties, Brussels, Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2009.</ref> Representative democracies which are stable have been analysed by Adolf Gasser and compared to the unstable representative democracies in his book Gemeindefreiheit als Rettung Europas which was published in 1943 and a second edition in 1947. Adolf Gasser stated the following requirements for a representative democracy in order to remain stable, unaffected by the iron law of oligarchy: Society has to be built up from bottom to top. As a consequence, society is built up by people, who are free and have the power to defend themselves with weapons. These free people join or form local communities. These local communities are independent, which includes financial independence, and they are free to determine their own rules. Local communities join into a higher unit, e.g. a canton. There is no hierarchical bureaucracy. There is competition between these local communities, e.g. on services delivered or on taxes. A drawback to this type of government is that elected officials are not required to fulfill promises made before their election and are able to promote their own self-interests once elected, providing an incohesive system of governance. Legislators are also under scrutiny as the system of majority-won legislators voting for issues for the large group of people fosters inequality among the marginalized. Proponents of direct democracy criticize representative democracy due to its inherent structure. As the fundamental basis of representative democracy is non inclusive system, in which representatives turn into an elite class that works behind closed doors, as well as the criticizing the elector system as being driven by a capitalistic and authoritarian system. Proposed solutions The system of stochocracy has been proposed as an improved system compared to the system of representative democracy, where representatives are elected. Stochocracy aims to at least reduce this degradation by having all representatives appointed by lottery instead of by voting. Therefore, this system is also called lottocracy. The system was proposed by the writer Roger de Sizif in 1998 in his book La Stochocratie. Choosing officeholders by lot was also the standard practice in ancient Athenian democracy and in ancient India. The rationale behind this practice was to avoid lobbying and electioneering by economic oligarchs. The system of deliberative democracy is a mix between a majority-ruled system and a consensus-based system. It allows for representative democracies or direct democracies to coexist with its system of governance, providing an initial advantage. See also Democracy Political representation Proportional representation Voir dire'' References External links Elections Types of democracy

Nation-building

Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas, "Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule, to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities are constructed." In Harris Mylonas's framework, "state elites employ three nation-building policies: accommodation, assimilation, and exclusion." Nation builders are those members of a state who take the initiative to develop the national community through government programs, including military conscription and national content mass schooling. Nation-building can involve the use of propaganda or major infrastructure development to foster social harmony and economic growth. According to Columbia University sociologist Andreas Wimmer, three factors tend to determine the success of nation-building over the long-run: "the early development of civil-society organisations, the rise of a state capable of providing public goods evenly across a territory, and the emergence of a shared medium of communication." Overview In the modern era, nation-building referred to the efforts of newly independent nations, to establish trusted institutions of national government, education, military defence, elections, land registry, import customs, foreign trade, foreign diplomacy, banking, finance, taxation, company registration, police, law, courts, healthcare, citizenship, citizen rights and liberties, marriage registry, birth registry, immigration, transport infrastructure and/or municipal governance charters. Nation-building can also include attempts to redefine the populace of territories that had been carved out by colonial powers or empires without regard to ethnic, religious, or other boundaries, as in Africa and the Balkans. These reformed states could then become viable and coherent national entities. Nation-building also includes the creation of national paraphernalia such as national flags, national coats of arms, national anthems, national days, national stadiums, national airlines, national languages, and national myths. At a deeper level, national identity may be deliberately constructed by molding different ethnic groups into a nation, especially since in many newly established states colonial practices of divide and rule had resulted in ethnically heterogeneous populations. In a functional understanding of nation-building, both economic and social factors are seen as influential. The development of nation-states in different times and places is influenced by differing conditions. It has been suggested that elites and masses in Great Britain, France, and the United States slowly grew to identify with each other as those states were established and that nationalism developed as more people were able to participate politically and to receive public goods in exchange for taxes. The more recent development of nation-states in geographically diverse, postcolonial areas may not be comparable due to differences in underlying conditions. Many new states were plagued by cronyism (the exclusion of all but friends); corruption which erodes trust; and tribalism (rivalry between tribes within the nation). This sometimes resulted in their near-disintegration, such as the attempt by Biafra to secede from Nigeria in 1970, or the continuing demand of the Somali people in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia for complete independence. The Rwandan genocide, as well as the recurrent problems experienced by the Sudan, can also be related to a lack of ethnic, religious, or racial cohesion within the nation. It has often proved difficult to unite states with similar ethnic but different colonial backgrounds. Differences in language may be particularly hard to overcome in the process of nation-building. Whereas some consider Cameroon to be an example of success, fractures are emerging in the form of the Anglophone problem. Failures like Senegambia Confederation demonstrate the problems of uniting Francophone and Anglophone territories. Terminology: nation-building versus state-building Traditionally, there has been some confusion between the use of the term nation-building and that of state-building (the terms are sometimes used interchangeably in North America). Both have fairly narrow and different definitions in political science, the former referring to national identity, the latter to infrastructure, and the institutions of the state. The debate has been clouded further by the existence of two very different schools of thought on state-building. The first (prevalent in the media) portrays state-building as an interventionist action by foreign countries. The second (more academic in origin and increasingly accepted by international institutions) sees state-building as an indigenous process. For a discussion of the definitional issues, see state-building, Carolyn Stephenson's essay, and the papers by Whaites, CPC/IPA or ODI cited below. The confusion over terminology has meant that more recently, nation-building has come to be used in a completely different context, with reference to what has been succinctly described by its proponents as "the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring transition to democracy". In this sense nation-building, better referred to as state-building, describes deliberate efforts by a foreign power to construct or install the institutions of a national government, according to a model that may be more familiar to the foreign power but is often considered foreign and even destabilizing. In this sense, state-building is typically characterized by massive investment, military occupation, transitional government, and the use of propaganda to communicate governmental policy. Role of education The expansion of primary school provision is often believed to be a key driver in the process of nation-building. European rulers during the 19th century relied on state-controlled primary schooling to teach their subjects a common language, a shared identity, and a sense of duty and loyalty to the regime. In Prussia, mass primary education was introduced to foster "loyalty, obedience and devotion to the King". These beliefs about the power of education in forming loyalty to the sovereign were adopted by states in other parts of the world as well, in both non-democratic and democratic contexts. Reports on schools in the Soviet Union illustrate the fact that government-sponsored education programs emphasized not just academic content and skills but also taught "a love of country and mercilessness to the enemy, stubbornness in the overcoming of difficulties, an iron discipline, and love of oppressed peoples, the spirit of adventure and constant striving". Foreign policy operations Germany and Japan after World War II After World War II, the Allied victors engaged in large-scale nation-building with considerable success in Germany. The United States, Britain, and France operated sectors that became West Germany. The Soviet Union operated a sector that became East Germany. In Japan, the victors were nominally in charge but in practice, the United States was in full control, again with considerable political, social, and economic impact. NATO After the collapse of communism in Yugoslavia in 1989, a series of civil wars broke out. Following the Dayton Agreement, also referred to as the Dayton Accords, NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and also the European Union, engaged in stopping the civil wars, punishing more criminals, and operating nation-building programs especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo. Afghanistan Soviet efforts Afghanistan was the target for Soviet-style nation-building during the Soviet–Afghan War. However, Soviet efforts bogged down due to Afghan resistance, in which foreign nations (primarily the United States) supported the mujahideen due to the geopolitics of the Cold War. The Soviet Union ultimately withdrew in 1988, ending the conflict. NATO efforts After the Soviets left, the Taliban established de facto control of much of Afghanistan. It tolerated the Al Qaeda forces that carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. NATO responded under US leadership. In December 2001, after the Taliban government was overthrown, the Afghan Interim Administration under Hamid Karzai was formed. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council to help assist the Karzai administration and provide basic security. By 2001, after two decades of civil war and famine, it had the lowest life expectancy,and much of the population were hungry. Many foreign donors—51 in all—started providing aid and assistance to rebuild the war-torn country. For example, Norway's had charge of the province of Faryab. The Norwegian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team had the mission of effecting security, good governance, and economic development, 2005–2012. The initial invasion of Afghanistan, intended to disrupt Al Qaeda's networks ballooned into a 20 year long nation building project. Frank McKenzie described it as "an attempt to impose a form of government, a state, that would be a state the way that we recognize a state." According to McKenzie, the US "lost track of why we were there". Afghanistan was not "ungovernable", according to the former Marine Corps general, but it was "ungovernable with the Western model that will be imposed on it". He says the gradual shift to nation building put the US "far beyond the scope" of their original mission to disrupt Al Qaeda. References Further reading Ahmed, Zahid Shahab. "Impact of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor on nation-building in Pakistan." Journal of Contemporary China 28.117 (2019): 400–414. Barkey, Karen. After empire: Multiethnic societies and nation-building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg empires (Routledge, 2018). Bendix, Reinhard. Nation-building & citizenship: studies of our changing social order (1964), influential pioneer Berdal, Mats, and Astri Suhrke. "A Good Ally: Norway and International Statebuilding in Afghanistan, 2001-2014." Journal of Strategic Studies 41.1-2 (2018): 61–88. online Bereketeab, Redie. "Education as an Instrument of Nation‐Building in Postcolonial Africa." Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 20.1 (2020): 71–90. online Bokat-Lindell, Spencer. "Is the United States Done Being the World’s Cop? The New York Times July 20, 2021 Dibb, Paul (2010) "The Soviet experience in Afghanistan: lessons to be learned?" Australian Journal of International Affairs 64.5 (2010): 495–509. Dobbins, James. America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (RAND, 2005). Engin, Kenan (2013). "Nation-Building" – Theoretische Betrachtung und Fallbeispiel: Irak . Baden Baden: Nomos Verlag. . Ergun, Ayça. "Citizenship, National Identity, and Nation-Building in Azerbaijan: Between the Legacy of the Past and the Spirit of Independence." Nationalities Papers (2021): 1–18. online Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. Common denominators: Ethnicity, nation-building and compromise in Mauritius (Routledge, 2020). Etzioni, Amitai. "The folly of nation building." National Interest 120 (2012): 60–68; on American misguided efforts online Hodge, Nathan (2011), Armed Humanitarians: The Rise of the Nation Builders, New York: Bloomsbury USA. Ignatieff, Michael. (2003) Empire lite: nation building in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan (Random House, 2003). Junco, José Alvarez. "The nation-building process in nineteenth-century Spain." in Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula (Routledge, 2020) pp. 89–106. Latham, Michael E. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation Building" in the Kennedy Era (U North Carolina Press, 2000) Mylonas, Harris (2017), "Nation-building", Oxford Bibliographies in International Relations. Ed. Patrick James. New York: Oxford University Press. Polese, Abel, et al., eds. Identity and nation building in everyday post-socialist life (Routledge, 2017). Safdar, Ghulam, Ghulam Shabir, and Abdul Wajid Khan. "Media's Role in Nation Building: Social, Political, Religious and Educational Perspectives." Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences (PJSS) 38.2 (2018). online Scott, James Wesley. "Border politics in Central Europe: Hungary and the role of national scale and nation-building." Geographia Polonica 91.1 (2018): 17–32. online Seoighe, Rachel. War, denial and nation-building in Sri Lanka: after the end (Springer, 2017). Smith, Anthony (1986), "State-Making and Nation-Building" in John Hall (ed.), States in History. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 228–263. Wimmer, Andreas. "Nation building: Why some countries come together while others fall apart." Survival 60.4 (2018): 151–164. External links Fritz V, Menocal AR, Understanding State-building from a Political Economy Perspective, ODI, London: 2007. CIC/IPA, Concepts and Dilemmas of State-building in Fragile Situations, OECD-DAC, Paris: 2008. Whaites, Alan, State in Development: Understanding State-building, DFID, London: 2008. Political science terminology International relations Nation

Civic virtue

Civic virtue is the cultivation of habits important for the success of a society. Closely linked to the concept of citizenship, civic virtue is often conceived as the dedication of citizens to the common welfare of each other even at the cost of their individual interests. The identification of the character traits that constitute civic virtue has been a major concern of political philosophy. The term civility refers to behavior between persons and groups that conforms to a social mode (that is, in accordance with the civil society), as itself being a foundation of society and law. In republics Civic virtues are historically taught as a matter of chief concern in nations under republican forms of government, and societies with cities. When final decisions on public matters are made by a monarch, it is the monarch's virtues which influence those decisions. When a broader class of people become the decision-makers, it is then their virtues which characterize the types of decisions made. This form of decision-making is considered superior in determining what best protects the interests of the majority. Aristocratic oligarchies may also develop traditions of public lists of virtues they believe appropriate in the governing class, but these virtues differ significantly from the general civic virtues; for example, ruling class virtues stress martial courage over commercial honesty. Constitutions became important in defining the public virtue of republics and constitutional monarchies. The earliest forms of constitutional development can be seen in late medieval Germany (see Communalism before 1800) and in the Dutch and English revolts of the 16th and 17th centuries. In ancient Greece and Rome In the classical culture of Europe and those places that follow its political tradition, concern for civic virtue starts with the oldest republics of which we have extensive records, Athens and Rome. Attempting to define the virtues needed to successfully govern the Athenian polis was a matter of significant concern for Socrates and Plato; a difference in civic vision ultimately was one of the factors that led to the trial of Socrates and his conflict with the Athenian democracy. The Politics of Aristotle viewed citizenship as consisting, not of political rights, but rather of political duties. Citizens were expected to put their private lives and interests aside and serve the state in accordance with duties defined by law. Rome, even more than Greece, produced a number of moralistic philosophers such as Cicero, and moralistic historians such as Tacitus, Sallust, Plutarch and Livy. Many of these figures were either personally involved in power struggles that took place in the late Roman Republic, or wrote elegies to liberty which was lost during their transition to the Roman Empire. They tended to blame this loss of liberty on the perceived lack of civic virtue in their contemporaries, contrasting them with idealistic examples of virtue drawn from Roman history, and even non-Roman "barbarians". During the Medieval Age and the Renaissance Texts of antiquity became very popular by the Renaissance. Scholars tried to gather as many of them as they could find, especially in monasteries, from Constantinople, and from the Muslim world. Aided by the rediscovery of the virtue ethics and metaphysics of Aristotle by Avicenna and Averroes, Thomas Aquinas fused Aristotle's cardinal virtues with Christianity in his Summa Theologica (1273). Humanists wanted to reinstate the ancient ideal of civic virtue through education. Instead of punishing sinners, it was believed that sin could be prevented by raising virtuous children. Living in the city became important for the elite, because people in the city are forced to behave themselves when communicating with others. A problem was that the proletarianization of peasants created an environment in cities where such workers were hard to control. Cities tried to keep the proletarians out or tried to civilize them by forcing them to work in poor houses. Important aspects of civic virtue were: civic conversation (listening to others, trying to reach an agreement, keeping yourself informed so you can have a relevant contribution), civilized behavior (decent clothing, accent, containing feelings and needs), work (people had to make a useful contribution to the society). Religion changed. It became more focused on individual behavior instead of a communion of people. The people who believed in civic virtue belonged to a small majority surrounded by "barbarity". Parental authority was popular, especially the authority of the monarch and the state. During the Enlightenment Civic virtue was very popular during the Enlightenment but it had changed dramatically. Parental authority began to wane. Freedom became popular. But people can only be free by containing their emotions in order to keep some space for others. Trying to keep proletarians out or putting them in a poor house was not done anymore. The focus was now on educating. Work was an important virtue during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but the people who worked were treated with contempt by the non-working elite. The 18th century brought an end to this. The advancing rich merchants class emphasized the importance of work and contributing to society for all people including the elite. Science was popular. The government and the elites tried to change the world and humanity positively by expanding the bureaucracy. Leading thinkers thought that education and the breach of barriers would liberate everybody from stupidity and oppression. Civic conversations were held in societies and scientific journals. In the republican revolutions of the 18th century Civic virtue also became a matter of public interest and discussion during the 18th century, in part because of the American Revolutionary War. An anecdote first published in 1906 has Benjamin Franklin answer a woman who asked him, "Well, Doctor, what have we got – a Republic or a Monarchy?" He responded: "A Republic, if you can keep it." The current use for this quotation is to bolster with Franklin's authority the opinion that republics require the cultivation of specific political beliefs, interests, and habits among their citizens, and that if those habits are not cultivated, they are in danger of falling back into some sort of authoritarian rule, such as a monarchy. American historian Gordon S. Wood called it a universal 18th-century assumption that, while no form of government was more beautiful than a republic, monarchies had various advantages: the pomp and circumstances surrounding them cultivated a sense that the rulers were in fact superior to the ruled and entitled to their obedience, and maintained order by their presence. By contrast, in a republic, the rulers were the servants of the public, and there could therefore be no sustained coercion from them. Laws had to be obeyed for the sake of conscience, rather than fear of the ruler's wrath. In a monarchy, people might be restrained by force to submit their own interest to their government's. In a republic, by contrast, people must be persuaded to submit their own interests to the government, and this voluntary submission constituted the 18th century's notion of civic virtue. In the absence of such persuasion, the authority of the government would collapse, and tyranny or anarchy were imminent. Authority for this ideal was found once more among the classical, and especially the Roman, political authors and historians. But since the Roman writers wrote during a time when the Roman republican ideal was fading away, its forms but not its spirit or substance being preserved in the Roman Empire, the 18th-century American and French revolutionaries read them with a spirit to determine how the Roman republic failed, and how to avoid repeating that failure. In his Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republicks, the English Whig historian Edward Wortley Montagu sought to describe "the principal causes of that degeneracy of manners, which reduc'd those once brave and free people into the most abject slavery." Following this reading of Roman ideals, the American revolutionary Charles Lee envisioned a Spartan, egalitarian society where every man was a soldier and master of his own land, and where people were "instructed from early infancy to deem themselves property of the State.... (and) were ever ready to sacrifice their concerns to her interests." The agrarianism of Thomas Jefferson represents a similar belief system; Jefferson believed that the ideal republic was composed of independent, rural agriculturalists rather than urban tradesmen. These widely held ideals led American revolutionaries to found institutions such as the Society of the Cincinnati, named after the Roman farmer and dictator Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who according to Livy left his farm to lead the army of the Roman republic during a crisis, and voluntarily returned to his plow once the crisis had passed. About Cincinnatus, Livy writes: 19th to mid-20th century Civic virtues were especially important during the 19th and 20th century. Class and profession greatly affected the virtues of the individual, and there was a general division about what the best civic virtues were. Additionally several major ideologies came into being, each with their own ideas about civic virtues. Conservatism emphasized family values and obedience to the father and the state. Nationalism carried by masses of people made patriotism an important civic virtue. Liberalism combined republicanism with a belief in progress and liberalization based on capitalism. Civic virtues focused on individual behavior and responsibility were very important. Many liberals turned into socialists or conservatives in the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. Others became social liberals, valuing capitalism with a strong government to protect the poor. A focus on agriculture and landed nobility was supplanted by a focus on industry and civil society. National Socialism, the German variant of twentieth century fascism whose precepts were laid out in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, classified inhabitants of the ideal nation into three main hierarchical categories, each of which had different rights and duties in relation to the state: citizens, subjects, and aliens. The first category, citizens, were to possess full civic rights and responsibilities. Citizenship would be conferred only on those males of pure racial stock who had completed military service, and could be revoked at any time by the state. Only women who worked independently or who married a citizen could obtain citizenship for themselves. The second category, subjects, referred to all others who were born within the nation's boundaries who did not fit the racial criteria for citizenship. Subjects would have no voting rights, could not hold any position within the state, and possessed none of the other rights and civic responsibilities conferred on citizens. The final category, aliens, referred to those who were citizens of another state, who also had no rights: In later times A number of institutions and organizations promote the idea of civic virtue in the older democracies. Among such organizations are the Boy Scouts of America, and Civil Air Patrol whose U.S. oath, Cadet Oath and Cadet Honor Code reflect a goal to foster habits aimed at serving a larger community: Boy Scouts of America Scout Oath: Boy Scouts of America Scout Law: Cadet Oath: Air Force Academy Cadet Honor Code: Institutions that might be said to encourage civic virtue include the school, particularly with social studies courses, and the prison, namely in its rehabilitative function. Other, later phenomena associated with the concept of civic virtue include McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, a series of primary school textbooks whose compiler, William Holmes McGuffey, deliberately sought out patriotic and religious sentiments to instill these values in the children who read them. William Bennett, a Reagan administration cabinet member turned conservative commentator, produced The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories in 1993, another anthology of literary materials that might be considered an attempt to update McGuffey's concept. Comparable ideas in non-Western societies Confucianism, which specifies cultural virtues and traditions which all members of society are to observe, in particular the heads of households and those who govern, was the basis of Chinese society for more than 2000 years and is still influential in modern China. Its related concepts can be compared to the Western idea of civic virtue. Related concepts Friendliness Friendliness is a pro-social set of behaviors seen in people who are pleasant, agreeable, interested in others, genial, empathetic, considerate, and helpful. Not all civil behaviors are friendly. For example, duelling in response to an intolerable insult has been considered a civil behavior in many cultures, but it is not a friendly action. Politeness Politeness focuses on the application of good manners or etiquette. Because politeness is informed by cultural values, there is substantial overlap between what is polite and what is civil. However, if the action in question is not related to civic virtues, then it may be polite or rude, without strictly being considered civil or incivil. Social graces The social graces include deportment, poise, and fashion, which are unrelated to civility. Incivility Incivility is a general term for social behavior lacking in civic virtue or good manners, on a scale from rudeness or lack of respect for elders, to vandalism and hooliganism, through public drunkenness and threatening behavior. The word incivility is derived from the Latin incivilis, meaning "not of a citizen." The distinction between plain rudeness, and perceived incivility as threat, will depend on some notion of "civility" as structural to society; incivility as anything more ominous than bad manners is therefore dependent on appeal to notions like its antagonism to the complex concepts of civic virtue or civil society. It has become a contemporary political issue in a number of countries. See also Arete Civic engagement Civic nationalism Civic virtue (organizational citizenship behavior dimension), specific to organizational behavior theory Civil disobedience Civil religion Classical republicanism Commonwealth men Courtesy "England expects that every man will do his duty" Good citizenship Public good Republicanism Theological virtues Virtus Footnotes Bibliography John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (London 1993) Daniel Roche, La France des Lumières (Paris 1993) Parker, Harold T. The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries (Univ. Chicago, 1937) Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Univ. North Carolina Press 1969, repr. Horton 1975) Peggy Noonan (2008) Patriotic Grace Stephen L. Carter Integrity Virtue Social concepts Republicanism Democracy Concepts in political philosophy

Hybrid regime

A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one (or vice versa). Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War. The term hybrid regime arises from a polymorphic view of political regimes that opposes the dichotomy of autocracy or democracy. Modern scholarly analysis of hybrid regimes focuses attention on the decorative nature of democratic institutions (elections do not lead to a change of power, different media broadcast the government point of view and the opposition in parliament votes the same way as the ruling party, among others), from which it is concluded that democratic backsliding, a transition to authoritarianism is the most prevalent basis of hybrid regimes. Some scholars also contend that hybrid regimes may imitate a full dictatorship. Definition Scholars vary on the definition of hybrid regimes based on their primary academic discipline. "Some scholars argue that deficient democracies and deficient autocracies can be seen as examples of hybrid regimes, whereas others argue that hybrid regimes combine characteristics of both democratic and autocratic regimes." Scholars also debate if these regimes are in transition or are inherently a stable political system. In 1995 Terry Karl introduced the notion of "hybrid" regime, which was simply defined as "combining democratic and authoritarian elements". According to professor Matthijs Bogaards hybrid types are: Pippa Norris defined hybrid regimes as: Henry E. Hale defined hybrid regimes as; Leonardo Morlino defined hybrid regimes as; Professor Jeffrey C. Isaac defined hybrid regimes as: History The third wave of democratization from the 1970s onward has led to the emergence of hybrid regimes that are neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian. Neither the concept of illiberal democracy, nor the concept of electoral authoritarianism fully describes these hybrid regimes. Since the end of the Cold War, such regimes have become the most common among undemocratic countries. At the end of the process of transformation of authoritarian regimes, limited elections appear in one way or another when liberalization occurs. Liberal democracy has always been assumed while in practice this process basically froze "halfway". In relation to regimes that were previously called "transitional" in the 1980s, the term hybrid regime began to be used and was strengthened according to Thomas Carothers: Hybrid regimes have evolved to lean more authoritarian while keeping some democratic traits. One of the main issues with authoritarian rule is the ability to control the threats from the masses, and democratic elements in hybrid regimes can reduce social tension between the masses and the elite. After the third wave of democratization, some regimes became stuck in the transition to democracy, causing the creation of weak democratic institutions. This results from a lack of institutional ownership during critical points in the transition period leading the regime into a gray zone between democracy and autocracy. These developments have caused some scholars to believe that hybrid regimes are not poorly functioning democracies, but rather new forms of authoritarian regimes. Defective democratic stability is an indicator to explain and measure these new forms of autocracies. Additionally, approval ratings of political leaders play an important role in these types of regimes, and democratic elements can drive up the ratings of a strongman leader creating a tool not utilized previously. Today, 'hybrid regime' is a term used to explain a growing field of political development where authoritarian leaders incorporate elements of democracy that stabilize their regimes. Indicators According to Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, Larry Diamond and Thomas Carothers, signs of a hybrid regime include: The presence of external attributes of democracy (elections, multi-party system, legal opposition). A low degree of representation of the interests of citizens in the process of political decision-making (incapacity of associations of citizens, for example trade unions, or that they are in state control). A low level of political participation. The declarative nature of political rights and freedoms (formally there is in fact difficult implementation). A low level of trust in political institutions by the citizenry. Transition types Autocratization Democratisation Measurement There are various democratic freedom indices produced by intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations that publish assessments of the worlds political systems, according to their own definitions. Democracy Index According to the Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit there are 34 hybrid regimes, representing approximately 20% of countries, encompassing 17.2% to 20.5% of the world's population. "The EIU Democracy Index is based on ratings across 60 indicators, grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture." The Democracy Index defines hybrid regimes with the following characteristics: Electoral fraud or irregularities occur regularly Pressure is applied to political opposition Corruption is widespread and rule of law tends to be weak Media is pressured and harassed There are issues in the functioning of governance As of 2021 the countries considered hybrid regimes by the "Democracy Index" are: Bangladesh El Salvador North Macedonia Ukraine Moldova Montenegro Malawi Fiji Bhutan Madagascar Senegal Hong Kong Honduras Armenia Liberia Georgia Nepal Tanzania Bolivia Kenya Morocco Guatemala Uganda Zambia Sierra Leone Benin Gambia Turkey Pakistan Haiti Kyrgyzstan Lebanon Ivory Coast Nigeria Global State of Democracy Report According to the "Global State of Democracy Report" by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), there are twenty hybrid regimes. "International IDEA compiles data from 12 different data sources, including expert surveys and observational data includes the extent to which voting rights are inclusive, political parties are free to form and campaign for office, elections are free, and political offices are filled through elections." IDEA defined hybrid regimes as: As of 2021 the countries considered hybrid regimes by the "Global State of Democracy Report" are: Angola Benin Côte d'Ivoire Democratic Republic of the Congo Ethiopia Gabon Jordan Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Libya Mauritania Morocco Mozambique Nigeria Serbia Singapore Tanzania Togo Tunisia Turkey V-Dem Democracy Indices According to the V-Dem Democracy Indices compiled by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg there are 65 hybrid regimes. V-Dem's "Regimes of the World" indicators identify four political regimes: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies. According to the V-Dem Institute: Freedom House Freedom House measures the level of political and economic governance in 29 countries from Central Europe to Central Asia. "Freedom House assign scores to countries and territories across the globe on 10 indicators of political rights (e.g., whether there is a realistic opportunity for opposition parties to gain power through elections) and 15 indicators of civil liberties (e.g., whether there is a free and independent media)." Freedom House classifies transitional or hybrid regimes as: In 2022, Freedom House classified 11 of 29 countries analyzed as "Transitional or Hybrid Regimes": Armenia Georgia Moldova Bosnia and Herzegovina Kosovo Ukraine Hungary Albania Serbia North Macedonia Montenegro Typology According to Yale professor Juan José Linz, there are three main types of political systems today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with many different terms that describe specific types of hybrid regimes. Academics generally refer to a full dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism over a "hybrid system". Authoritarian governments that conduct elections are in many scholars view not hybrids, but are successful well-institutionalized stable authoritarian regimes. Democratic elements can simultaneously serve authoritarian purposes and contribute to democratization. Electoral authoritarianism Electoral authoritarianism means that democratic institutions are imitative and, due to numerous systematic violations of liberal democratic norms, in fact adhere to authoritarian methods. Electoral authoritarianism can be competitive and hegemonic, and the latter does not necessarily mean election irregularities. A. Schedler calls electoral authoritarianism a new form of authoritarian regime, not a hybrid regime or illiberal democracy. Moreover, a purely authoritarian regime does not need elections as a source of legitimacy while non-alternative elections, appointed at the request of the ruler, are not a sufficient condition for considering the regime conducting them to be hybrid. Electoral autocracy Illiberal democracy Dominant-party system Delegative democracy Dictablanda Guided democracy Liberal autocracy Semi-democracy Defective democracy Embedded democracy Competitive authoritarian regimes Competitive Authoritarian Regimes (or Competitive Authoritarianism) is a subtype of Authoritarianism and of the wider Hybrid Regime regime type. This regime type was created to encapsulate states that contained formal democratic institutions that rulers viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising legitimate political authority with a meaningful opposition and other semblances of democratic political society. However officials violate elections frequently and interfere with opposition organisations causing the regime to miss the minimum conventional standard for democracy. Three main instruments are used within Competitive Authoritarian Regimes to maintain political power: the self-serving use of state institutions (regarding abuses of electoral and judicial institutions such as voter intimidation and voter fraud); the overuse of state resources (to gain influence and/or power over proportional representation media, and use legal resources to disturb constitutional change); and the disruption of civil liberties (such as freedom of speech/press and association). Currently, within the political sphere, Competitive Authoritarianism has become a crucial regime type that has grown exponentially since the Post-Soviet era in multiple world regions without signs of slowing. On the contrary, there has been growth of Competitive Authoritarianism within previously steadfast democratic regimes, which has been attributed to the recent phenomenon of democratic backsliding. See also Authoritarian democracy Embedded democracy Delegative democracy Types of democracy Democracy-Dictatorship Index Hybrid institutions and governance Notes References Further reading Contemporary analysts Beatriz Magaloni. 2010. "The Game of Electoral Fraud and the Ousting of Authoritarian Rule." American Journal of Political Science, 54 (3): 751-65. Weyland, Kurt. 2024. "Hybrid Regimes in Historical Perspective." in The Oxford Handbook of Authoritarian Politics. Oxford University Press. Research history The researchers conducted a comparative analysis of political regimes around the world (Samuel Finer 1970), in developing countries (Almond and Coleman, 1960 ), among Latin America (Collier 1979) and West Africa regimes (Zolberg, 1966). Types of non-democratic regimes are described (Linz, 2000, originally published in 1975 and Perlmutter, 1981). Huntington and Moore (Huntington and Moore, 1970) discuss the one-party system issue Hermet (Guy Hermet, Rose, & Rouquie 1978) explores how elections are held in such authoritarian regimes,which are nominally democratic institutions. "Hybrid regimes" (Diamond 2002), "competitive authoritarianism" (Levitsky and Way 2002 ) and "electoral authoritarianism" (Schedler, 2006) as well as how officials who came to power in an undemocratic way form election rules (Lust-Okar and Jamal, 2002 ), institutionalize electoral frauds (Lehoucq 2003 , Schedler 2002 ) and manipulate the economy (L. Blaydes 2006, Magaloni 2006) in order to win the election and stay in power. External links Hybrid Concepts and the Concept of Hybridity - European Consortium for Political Research Democracy data: how do researchers measure democracy? -Our World in Data Mixed government

Internet activism

Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives. Types Within online activism Sandor Vegh distinguished three principal categories: active/reactive, organization/mobilization, and awareness/advocacy based. Active/reactive refers to either being proactive in efforts to bring about change or reacting to issues after they happen. Organization/mobilization refers to gathering people and information together for online or offline activism. Awareness/advocacy refers to sharing information to make others aware of an issue or advocating for issues and campaigns. There are other ways of classifying Internet activism, such as by the degree of reliance on the Internet versus offline mobilization. Thus, Internet sleuthing or hacking could be viewed as purely online forms of activism, whereas the Occupy Wall Street movement was mainly conducted offline, and only partially online. Development processes Exploring the dynamics of online activism for expressing resistance to a powerful organization, a study developed a critical mass approach to online activism. The results were integrated in a four-year longitudinal process model that explains how online activism started, generated societal outcomes, and changed over time. The model suggests that online activism helped organize collective actions and amplify the conditions for revolutionary movements to form. Yet, it provoked elites' reactions such as Internet filtering and surveillance, which do not only promote self-censorship and generate digital divide, but contribute to the ultimate decline of activism over time. The process model suggests a complex interplay among stakeholders' interests, opportunities for activism, costs, and outcomes that are neither foreseen nor entirely predictable. The authors challenge universal access to the Internet as a convenient and cost-free forum for practicing social activism by organizational stakeholders (customers, employees, outside parties). In fact, the technology enablers of social activism also enable its filtering and repression, and thus, more extreme states of information asymmetry may result in which powerful elites preserve their status and impose a greater digital divide. In one study, a discussion of a developmental model of political mobilization is discussed. By citizens joining groups and creating discussion, they are beginning their first stage of involvement. Progressively, it is hoped that they will begin signing petitions online and graduating to offline contact as long as the organization provides the citizen with escalating steps of involvement (Vitak et al., 2011). The issue of the mass media's centrality has been highly contested, with some people arguing that it promoted the voices of marginalized groups while others believe it sends forth the messages of the majority alone, leaving minority groups to have their voices robbed. Examples of early activism One early instance of online activism was opposition to the release of Lotus Marketplace. On April 10, 1990, Lotus announced a direct-mail marketing database product that was to contain name, address, demographic, and spending habit information on 120 million individual U.S. citizens. While much of the same data was already available elsewhere, privacy advocates worried about the availability of this data collected within one easily searchable database. Furthermore, the data would be distributed on CD-ROM and could not be changed until a new edition was released. In response, a mass e-mail and E-bulletin-board campaign was started, which included information on contacting Lotus and form letters. Larry Seiler, a New England–based computer professional, posted a message that was widely reposted on newsgroups and via e-mail: "It will contain a LOT of personal information about YOU, which anyone in the country can access by just buying the discs. It seems to me (and to a lot of other people, too) that this will be a little too much like big brother, and it seems like a good idea to get out while there is still time." Over 30,000 people contacted Lotus and asked for their names to be removed from the database. On January 23, 1991, Lotus announced that it had cancelled MarketPlace. In 1998 Dr. Daniel Mengara, a Gabonese scholar and activist living New Jersey, created a website called Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go) to encourage a revolution against the regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. In July 2003, Amnesty International reported the arrest of five Gabonese known to be members of Bongo Doit Partir. The members were detained for three months. Another well-known example of early Internet activism took place in 1998, when the Mexican rebel group EZLN used decentralized communications, such as cell phones, to network with developed world activists and help create the anti-globalization group Peoples Global Action (PGA) to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. The PGA continued to call for "global days of action" and rally support of other anti-globalization groups in this way. Later, a worldwide network of Internet activist sites, under the umbrella name of Indymedia, was created to provide coverage of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. Dorothy Kidd quotes Sheri Herndon in a July 2001 telephone interview about the role of the Internet in the anti-WTO protests: "The timing was right, there was a space, the platform was created, the Internet was being used, we could bypass the corporate media, we were using open publishing, we were using multimedia platforms. So those hadn't been available, and then there was the beginning of the anti-globalization movement in the United States." Kony 2012, a short film released on March 5, 2012, was intended to promote the charity's "Stop Kony" movement to Ugandan militant Joseph Kony globally known the hopes of having him arrested by the campaign's scheduled expiration at the end of 2012 The film spread virally. A poll suggested that more than half of young adult Americans heard about Kony 2012 in the days following the video's release. It was included among the top international events of 2012 by PBS and called the most viral video ever by TIME. Uses Internet activism has had the effect of causing increased collective action among people, as found by Postmes and Brunsting (2002), who discovered a tendency among internet users to rely on internalized group memberships and social identities in order to achieve social involvement online. The Internet is "tailor-made for a populist, insurgent movement," says Joe Trippi, who managed the Howard Dean campaign. In his campaign memoir, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Trippi notes that: [The Internet's] roots in the open-source ARPAnet, its hacker culture, and its decentralized, scattered architecture make it difficult for big, establishment candidates, companies and media to gain control of it. And the establishment loathes what it can't control. This independence is by design, and the Internet community values above almost anything the distance it has from the slow, homogeneous stream of American commerce and culture. Progressive candidates and companies with forward-looking vision have an advantage on the Internet, too. Television is, by its nature, a nostalgic medium. Look at Ronald Reagan's campaign ads in the 1980sthey were masterpieces of nostalgia promising a return to America's past glory and prosperity. The Internet, on the other hand, is a forward-thinking and forward-moving medium, embracing change and pushing the envelope of technology and communication. Spreading information The Internet is a key resource for independent activists, particularly those whose message may run counter to the mainstream. Listservs like Freedom News Group or BurmaNet assist in spreading news that would otherwise be inaccessible in these countries. Internet activists also organize petitions to be sent to the government as well as interest groups and organizations to protest or argue for change. Many non-profits and charities use these methods, emailing petitions to those on their email list and asking people to pass them on. The Internet also enables organizations such as NGOs to communicate with individuals in an inexpensive and timely manner. Indeed, many non-profit and advocacy organizations rely on the internet to launch campaigns with socially conscious messages to maintain a constant stream of revenue. Hashtag activism Hashtag activism is the use of hashtags for fighting or supporting a cause through the usage of social media outlets. The term "hashtag activism" first started circulating within journalism in 2011. Since then, its use has been associated with movements such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and many more. One example of the powerful rise of hashtag activism can be seen in the black feminist movement's use of hashtags to convey their cause. The famous hashtag "IamJada" was an internet backlash to the mocking "#Jadapose" that went viral, ensuing after sixteen-year-old girl Jada Smith was photographed following her gang rape In this instance, a hashtag was employed to convey a powerful anti-rape message. Yet another instance of where this type of activism was utilized for the matter of feminism and women's right, occurred in China in relation to the outbreak of COVID-19. While the rule of the country put efforts into trying to hide and downplay the start of what would develop into the pandemic, pressured hospitals were in need of supplies in form of menstrual protection and related products. Supplies which they, despite the fact that the vast majority of the medical workers is made up of females, were not given access to. Amongst others, hashtags such as #RefusePeriodShame, circulated in protest to the ongoing situation and the Wuhan hospital authorities, who were considered responsible for it. Soon to follow on the same thread, one of the VTubers of the Chinese Communist Youth Party League (CYL), known as Jiangshanjiao, an avatar displayed as a youthful female, gave rise to #JiangshanjiaoDoYouGetYourPeriod. The hashtag initially sparked from a post on Weibo where a user sarcastically wrote that exact question, to point out the absurdness in the societal denial of women's biological functions and needs. #JiangshanjiaoDoYouGetYourPeriod, while, like the previous hashtag mentioned, being censored and taken down by the government, had time to spread and catch a lot more attention than what #RefusePeriodShame did, and up until 15 March 2020, it accumulated over 89,200,000 views. Other notable instances in which marginalized groups have used hashtags as organizing tools for social justice include responses to racial violence and police profiling, as in the case of #BlackLivesMatter and #JusticeForTrayvon, along with misogyny and gendered violence, such as #MeToo and #YesAllWomen. Black Lives Matter One of the most prominent uses of hashtag activism is #BlackLivesMatter, a social justice movement that first began after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin, an African American teenage boy. The movement started as a hashtag and now it has been at the forefront of the fight against police brutality and racial profiling across the world. After the killing of Martin on February 26, 2012, several people wanted justice. The hashtag started to grow in popularity, with a Change.org petition calling for an investigation and prosecution of George Zimmerman. Social media users, including many celebrities retweeted, shared, and created new petitions, eventually raising over 2.1 million signatures combined by March 26, 2012. By April 11, 2012, Zimmerman was charged with the second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. After George Zimmerman was acquitted on July 13, 2013, a "letter to Black folks" was posted to Facebook by Alicia Garza. Garza ended her letter with the statement "Black lives matter", which her friend turned into a hashtag below. From here, #BlackLivesMatter or simply "BLM" became the movement against police brutality and killings of unarmed African Americans, as well as hate crimes and racially motivated crimes. #BlackLivesMatter's impact does not end online. The formation of Black Lives Matter allowed for activists across the United States to organize in-person protests and rallies together, no matter where they may be located. U.S. politicians—such as Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—have endorsed Black Lives Matter, aligning themselves with a push for racial justice. The most recent display of how the Black Lives Matter movement has been used as a platform for offline activism is the 2020 BLM protests that occurred after 17-year old Darnella Frazier live-streamed on Facebook the murder of George Floyd by then-police officer Derek Chauvin. Protests took place in all 50 states, as well as in many countries around the world. March For Our Lives After the Parkland high school shooting on February 14, 2018, #MarchForOurLives was born. Students came together to create this hashtag to fight for gun control in the U.S. This hashtag turned into an entire movement of over 800 protests across the United States with the main protest taking place in Washington, D.C. There was an estimated 200,000 people in attendance at the Washington, D.C. protest, alone. TikTok TikTok's platform has been increasingly used for raising up social issues through creative short videos, especially after an allegedly make-up tutorial turned into a call to action on China's treatment of Muslim Uighurs. The tutorial was banned for 50 minutes on November 26, 2019. Eric Han, the heads of TikTok's US content-moderation team, claimed the banning was due to a “human moderation error”. The Chinese owners declared the app does not remove content based on sensitivities to China. TikTok also partnered up with UN Women in a campaign fighting women violence in India which kicked off on November 25, 2019. The campaign can be found under the hashtag #KaunsiBadiBaatHai and features short videos with positive and negative examples of men interacting with women. In July 2020, the TikTok platform played a major role in the #FreeBritney movement surrounding Britney Spears and her conservatorship dispute. Though such activism led to a significant increase in public awareness of the case, it was criticized for spreading misinformation regarding the conservatorship alongside a number of conspiracy theories of varying accuracy. Use in political campaigns 2004 Presidential Campaign When discussing the 2004 U.S. presidential election candidates, Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said of the candidates which benefited from use of the Internet to attract supporters: "They are all charismatic, outspoken mavericks and insurgents. Given that the Internet is interactive and requires an affirmative action on the part of the users, as opposed to a passive response from TV users, it is not surprising that the candidate has to be someone people want to touch and interact with." A more decentralized approach to campaigning arose, in contrast to a top-down, message-focused approach usually conducted in the mainstream. "The mantra has always been, 'Keep your message consistent. Keep your message consistent,'" said John Hlinko, who has participated in Internet campaigns for MoveOn.org and the electoral primary campaign of Wesley Clark. "That was all well and good in the past. Now it's a recipe for disaster. You can choose to have a Stalinist structure that's really doctrinaire and that's really opposed to grassroots. Or you can say, 'Go forth. Do what you're going to do.' As long as we're running in the same direction, it's much better to give some freedom." 2008 Presidential Campaign Two-thirds of Internet users under the age of 30 have an SNS, and during the 2008 election, half of them used an SNS site for candidate information (Hirzalla, 2010). MoveOn.org endorsed then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008, and used this endorsement as an opportunity to encourage grassroots advertising. MoveOn hosted a competition that requested submissions from ordinary citizens with the criteria the digital ads were positive towards Obama. The contest drew 1,000 entries of 30-second ads for Obama that streamed on YouTube. This endorsement by a grassroots organization, and the ensuing contest, is an example of agenda setting that scholars have been studying ever since social media and digital content began influencing presidential politics. Studies delving into the 2008 presidential campaign examined inequality online of various ideologies deriving from various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Scholars concluded the 2008 race, and the influence of online politicking, did not see an empowerment of new voices. The idea that digital literacy become a concept taught in school, with educators incorporating blogging, commenting, and creating content as part of their curriculum, has been bandied about among social and political scientists in an effort to turn online enthusiasm from young people into demonstrable results at the ballot box. 2016 Presidential Campaign The 2016 presidential election changed the digital landscape again. Digital media scholars note that the hopes of developing digital literacy post 2008 turned into a fomenting distrust of traditional news media. People of all ages and political inclinations gravitated towards social media sources that acted as echo chambers, and online personalities and organizations were held in higher esteem than traditional news sources. Non-traditional activism The Internet has become the catalyst for protests such as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring as those involved have increasingly relied on social media to organize and stay connected. In Myanmar, online news paper Freedom News Group has leaked some government corruption and fuel to protests. In 2017, the Sleeping Giants cyberactivist group, among others, launched a boycott campaign against controversial, conservative webpage Breitbart News, getting more than 2,000 organizations to remove it from ad buys. Corporate activism Corporations are also using Internet activist techniques to increase support for their causes. According to Christopher Palmeri with BusinessWeek Online, companies launch sites with the intent to positively influence their own public image, to provide negative pressure on competitors, to influence opinion within select groups, and to push for policy changes. The clothing manufacturer, American Apparel is an example: The company hosts a website called Legalize LA that advocates immigration reform via blog, online advertising, links to news stories and educational materials. Protest groups have responded by posting YouTube videos and establishing a boycott website. Corporate methods of information dissemination is labelled "astroturfing", as opposed to "grassroots activism", due to the funding for such movements being largely private. More recent examples include the right-wing FreedomWorks.org which organized the "Taxpayer March on Washington" on September 12, 2009, and the Coalition to Protect Patients' Rights, which opposes universal health care in the U.S. Religious activism Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and engaging in collective study via email, on-line chat rooms and web-based message boards." Political activism Online extremism The Internet is widely accessible by everyone. Thus, it has, since its beginning, increasingly become a place where various opinions are expressed, and not seldom are those opinions ones from some very far end of the spectrum. Extremists of different sorts have come to heavily rely on the Internet to the point where it is no longer just a means amongst others to achieve a certain objective, but more often than not, it is where the main part of a movement takes place. Activities such as the conveyance of perceivably extreme, bureaucratic ideas, or even the outlining of strategic acts of violence or destruction, are ones nowadays likely to occur online. In other words, this type of "online extremism" could, though difficult to precisely define, be described as the subcategory of Internet activism that is brought forward by, or connected with, individuals or groups that possess what are generally viewed to be extreme opinions. White Nationalism In 1998, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke wrote on his website, “I believe that the internet will begin a chain reaction of racial enlightenment that will shake the world by the speed of its intellectual conquest.” White nationalists quickly saw the potential of the Internet as a platform to effectively disseminate their message to a mass audience. This exploitation of technological innovations is not a novel concept for this group. In the early 20th century, with the emergence of film technology, the KKK created their own film companies and produced films like The Toll of Justice (1923) to spread their message. Then, a century later, with the rise of digital technologies, the KKK adapted to the changing media landscape to become a digital movement. They not only adapted to the digital age, but also found vulnerabilities through which they could most quickly and efficiently insert their ideologies. Examples of this included strategic domain names and hidden propaganda content. Today, white nationalists' efforts to push their principles on the Web combined with tech companies' belief in the Internet as "raceless" motivate white nationalists to continue to exploit algorithms and influence digital spaces such as Twitter. As algorithms work in a self-reinforcing manner, they worsen the psychological effects of confirmation bias. They provide search results that confirm one's beliefs and biases and, further, connect one to communities of like-minded people. This works in favor of white nationalists; for example, search engines' autocomplete features suggest racist notions, and make White supremacist sites readily accessible to users. Environmental activism One of the earliest books on activism was Don Rittner's Ecolinking: Everyone's Guide to Online Environmental Information, published by Peachpit Press in 1992. Rittner, an environmental activist from upstate New York, spent more than 20 years researching and saving the Albany Pine Barrens. He was a beta tester for America Online and ran their Environmental Forum for the company from 1988 to when it launched in 1990. He took his early environmental knowledge and computer savvy and wrote what was called the bible of the online environmental community. It showed new Net users how to get online, find environmental information, connect to environmentalists around the world, and how to use those resources to save the planet. In August 2018, a movement of environmental activism was initiated in Sweden, by now widely known climate activist Greta Thunberg. It all started with Greta, 15 years of age at the time and influenced by the creation of #MarchForOurLives, giving her opinion on the ongoing climate change, by displaying a large sign in front of the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) in protest. This act would start the "School Strike for Climate" (SSC) (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet), a movement that would eventually spread, largely through attention in media, across the globe and develop into something that came to be internationally named "Fridays for Future" (FFF). Through having children miss classes on Fridays to participate in the strike, it has from the moment it started until today, reached and affected leading governments of the world by raising environmental awareness. In 2020 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the National Trust began the #BlossomWatch campaign, which encouraged people to share the first signs of Spring with one another, in particular images of blossom. Sexual assault activism Activism against sexual assault is often led on the internet, where individuals may feel comfortable talking about uncomfortable topics. One such movements is the #NotGuilty movement. This movement began in April 2015 when Ione Wells, an Oxford University student shared a "letter to her attacker" in her college paper. The letter described how she was sexually assaulted and how she chose to respond and build from that point in her life. At the end of the letter she urged readers to send a letter back describing their own sexual assault experience with the hashtag #notguilty. She received so many letters from locals that she decided to create a website called "notGuiltyCampaign.co.uk". This caused global attention and inspired many to share their stories. The Me Too movement is a similar movement that started in Hollywood. Initially, the activist Tarana Burke created the phrase back in 2006 to "empower women through empathy", but first over a decade later, the actress Alyssa Milano gave birth to the usage of the saying that would lead to the eventual spread of it, after using it in a post on Twitter, in which she acknowledged several accusations of sexual assault against film producer Harvey Weinstein. It would from there on not be long until it stretched and attached on various online platforms, and in no more than a day after Milano's tweet, the #MeToo hashtag had been reused over 500,000 times on that same media, as well as 4.7 million times on Facebook. The phrase was first used to demonstrate the amount of sexual assault that happens to young actresses and actors in Hollywood, and it was largely due to the early involvement of several well known individuals from the entertainment industry, who used the hashtag in their own posts, that the movement achieved the spread that it did. It soon expanded to apply to all forms of sexual assault, especially in the work place, and with time it also came to move from concerning mainly white heterosexual women, to eventually being used by both men and women with different sexualities and ethnicity. These movements were intended to create an outlet for men and women to share their experiences with those with similar views without blame or guilt. They brought widespread attention to sexual assault and caused much controversy about changes that should be made accordingly. Criticism around movements such as these centers on concerns about whether or not participants are being dishonest for their own gain or are misinterpreting acts of kindness. However, the same Me Too movement, which also reached Egypt showed the adverse side of the activism where witness detention in one of the high-profile rape cases highlighted the prioritisation of traditional social morality by the government over women's rights in the country. Hacktivism Denial-of-Service attacks, the taking over and vandalizing of a website, uploading Trojan horses, and sending out e-mail bombs (mass e-mailings) are also examples of Internet activism. While the concept is difficult to exactly pinpoint, the phrase "hacktivism" summarizes the act of somehow utilizing hacking capabilities as a means to achieve some type of political goal, and the expression is occasionally also referred to as a variation of "cyberterrorism". The varieties of different routes groups of hacktivists choose to approach the organization, website or forum that they are taking on, can be categorized into different tactics. Some examples of those tactics or strategies are "DDoS attacks", "Doxing", and "Webdefacement", all of which are slightly different ways of reaching an often similar end goal. For additional understanding and explanation, as well as for more specific examples of these types of subversive actions, see hacktivism. Impact on everyday political discussions According to some observers, the Internet may have considerable potential to reach and engage opinion leaders who influence the thinking and behavior of others. According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, what they call "Online Political Citizens" (OPCs) are "seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives and colleagues… Normally, 10% of Americans qualify as Influentials. Our study found that 69% of Online Political Citizens are Influentials." Information communication technologies Information communication technologies (ICTs) make communication and information readily available and efficient. There are millions of Facebook accounts, Twitter users and websites, and one can educate oneself on nearly any subject. While this is for the most part a positive thing, it can also be dangerous. For example, people can read up on the latest news events relatively easily and quickly; however, there is danger in the fact that apathy or fatigue can quickly arise when people are inundated with so many messages, or that the loudest voice on a subject can often be the most extreme one, distorting public perception on the issue. These social networks which occupy ICTs are simply modern forms of political instruments which pre-date the technological era. People can now go to online forums or Twitter instead of town hall meetings. People can essentially mobilize worldwide through the Internet. Women can create transnational alliances and lobby for rights within their respective countries; they can give each other tips and share up-to-date information. This information becomes "hyper textual", available in downloadable formats with easy access for all. The UN organizations also use "hyper textual" formats. They can post information about upcoming summits, they can post newsletters on what occurred at these meetings, and links to videos can be shared; all of this information can be downloaded at the click of a button. The UN and many other actors are presenting this information in an attempt to get a certain message out in the cyber sphere and consequently steer public perception on an issue. With all this information so readily available, there is a rising trend of "slacktivism" or "clicktivism". While it is positive that information can be distributed so quickly and efficiently all around the world, there is negativity in the fact that people often take this information for granted, or quickly forget about it once they have seen it flash across our computer screens. Viral campaigns are great for sparking initial interest and conversation, but they are not as effective in the long term—people begin to think that clicking "like" on something is enough of a contribution, or that posting information about a current hot topic on their Facebook page or Twitter feed means that they have made a difference. Fundraising capability The Internet has also made it easier for small donors to play a meaningful role in financing political campaigns. Previously, small-donor fundraising was prohibitively expensive, as costs of printing and postage ate up most of the money raised. Groups like MoveOn, however, have found that they can raise large amounts of money from small donors at minimal cost, with credit card transaction fees constituting their biggest expense. "For the first time, you have a door into the political process that isn't marked 'big money,' " says Darr. "That changes everything." The Internet also allows ordinary people to contribute materially to Humanitarian relief projects designed to intervene in situations of global disaster or tragedy, as in the case of the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon event, which was launched three days after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. The telethon and its broadcast became an effective vehicle to present a plea for support and to collect contributions quickly, facilitating a relationship between entertainment and humanitarian fundraising that has developed in response to historical and economic market conditions. Ethics With internet technology vastly changing existing and introducing new mechanisms by which to attain, share and employ information, internet activism raises ethical issues for consideration. Proponents contend internet activism serves as an outlet for social progress but only if personal and professional ethics are employed. Supporters of online activism claim new information and communications technologies help increase the political power of activist groups that would otherwise have less resources. Proponents along this line of thinking claim the most effective use of online activism is its use in conjunction with more traditional or historical activism activities. Conversely, critics worry about facts and beliefs becoming indistinct in online campaigns and about "sectors of online activism [being] more self-interested than socially interested." These critics warn against the manipulation commonplace to online activism for private or personal interests such as exploiting charities for monetary gain, influencing voters in the political arena and inflating self-importance or effectiveness. In this sense, the ethical implication is that activism becomes descriptive rather than transformative of society. One of these reviewers suggests seven pitfalls to beware of in internet activism: "self-promotion at the expense of the movement... unsolicited bulk email... Hacktivism... violating copyright... nagging... violating privacy... and being scary." Many of the ethical criticisms against the prevalence of online activism are further discussed in the criticisms section of this article. Criticism Demographic issues Critics argue that Internet activism faces the same challenges as other aspects of the digital divide, particularly the global digital divide. Some say it gives disproportionate representation to those with greater access or technological ability. Groups that may be disadvantaged by the move to activist activity online are those that have limited access to technologies, or lack the technological literacy to engage meaningfully online; these include ethnic and racial minorities, those of lower socioeconomic status, those with lower levels of education, and the elderly. Issues like racism and sexism are issues that internet activists reportedly deal with. A study looked at the impact of Social Networking Sites (SNS) on various demographics and their political activity. Not surprisingly college students used SNS for political activity the most but this was followed by a more unlikely group, those that had not completed high school. In addition the probability for non-White citizens to consume political information was shown to be higher than that of Whites. These two outcomes go in the face of normal predictors of political activity. Despite these surprising findings older generations, men and whites showed the highest levels of political mobilization. Acts of political mobilization, such as fundraising, volunteering, protesting require the most continued interest, resources and knowledge (Nam, 2010). Polarization One concern raised by University of California, Santa Cruz professor Barbara Epstein, is that the Internet "allows people who agree with each other to talk to each other and gives them the impression of being part of a much larger network than is necessarily the case." She warns that the impersonal nature of communication by computer may actually undermine the human contact that always has been crucial to social movements. On the other hand, Scott Duke Harris of the San Jose Mercury News noted that "the Internet connects [all sides of issues, not just] an ideologically broad anti-war constituency, from the leftists of ANSWER to the pressed-for-time 'soccer moms' who might prefer MoveOn, and conservative activists as well." Slacktivism Activist Ralph Nader has stated that "the Internet doesn't do a very good job of motivating action", citing that the United States Congress, corporations and the Pentagon do not necessarily "fear the civic use of the Internet." Ethan Zuckerman talks about slacktivism, claiming that the Internet has devalued certain currencies of activism. Citizens may "like" an activist group on Facebook, visit a website, or comment on a blog, but fail to engage in political activism beyond the Internet, such as volunteering or canvassing. This critique has been criticized as Western-centric, however, because it discounts the impact this can have in authoritarian or repressive contexts. Journalist Courtney C. Radsch argued that even this low level of engagement was an important form of activism for Arab youth because it is a form of free speech, and can spark mainstream media coverage. University of North Carolina professor Zeynep Tufekci has argued that the need to put in significant organizing time in the pre-Internet era is what gave street protests their strength. Max Halupka, of the Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, likens slacktivism to "an impulsive and non-committal online political response." Scholars are divided about whether the Internet will increase or decrease political participation, including slacktivism. Those who suggest political participation will increase believe the Internet can be used to recruit and communicate with more users, and offers lower-costs modes of participation for those who lack the time or motivation to engage otherwise. Those concerned that the Internet will decrease activism argue that the Internet occupies free time that can no longer be spent getting involved in activist groups, or that Internet activism will replace more substantial, effortful forms of in-person activism. The Pew Research Center has found that platforms create distraction resulting in consumers and online activists believe they are making a difference while their sharing their post is only furthering the echo chamber of media.  The Pew Research Center has also found that about 79% of adults believe that "slacktivism" distracts consumers from issues that are truly important and that the majority of adults found that social media resulted in some of form of negative result. Journalist and writer Malcolm Gladwell argues that activism through social media and the internet cannot be successful because they promote a 'lazy' way of activism that doesn't require people to put in meaningful effort. For example 'liking' a protest related post on social media, people feel like they have contributed to a cause, which makes them less likely to take more costly, and some would argue more effective, action like joining a protest. With cases such as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements, it shows how internet activism can become more than slacktivism. Scholars have found that internet activist communities and offline activist communities work closely together, rather than being two separate entities. With internet activism, activists can organize without the constraints of physical location. The Pew Research Center has found that eight-in-ten Americans have been proven effecting in spreading information and awareness for varying public issues. Whether this is due to physical, mental, or financial constraints, internet activism may be the most accessible and comfortable for disabled people. If able to attend a physical protest, the inaccessibility of public spaces is often too large of a roadblock to participation. Performative activism Similar to slacktivism, performative activism refers to the action of acting as if one is an advocate or activistoften on social mediafor personal gain. This term is used as a negative term towards those who seem to be untruthful or exaggerating their activism work. Performative activism became frequently used after the 2020 BLM protests, this term started to become widely used as many took to social media to participate in the Black Lives Matter movement. The intentions of a lot of new activists and allies were questioned. On June 2, 2021, the social media platform, Instagram, was flooded with millions of the same image. These images were black squares under the hashtag, #BlackoutTuesday. The purpose of this online protest was to amplify Black voices on social media. However, many criticized this protest, arguing that the protest had the opposite effect as the squares flooded the important #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. People started to accuse those who participated in Blackout Tuesday, but did not do anything else in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, of being performative activists. State repression In Net Delusion, author Evgeny Morozov argues against cyberutopianism. He describes how the Internet is successfully used against activists and for the sake of state repression. China presents a good example of this. Internet censorship in China has often been used as a way to achieve political stability of the Chinese Communist Party. The most well known example of internet censorship in China is the Covid-19 virus when China suppressed any information regarding the virus. Information was able to get out though because of Dr. Li Wenliang, but was considered to be falsified. See also Internet vigilantism Online social movement User revolt Notes References Further reading Eric J.S. Townsend, E-Activism Connects Protest Groups. Web Makes It Easy To Organize Rallies Quickly, But Sheer Volume Of E-Mail Can Hinder Cause, Hartford Courant, December 4, 2002. Steven F. Hick and John G. McNutt, Advocacy, Activism, and the Internet: Community Organization and Social Policy, Lyceum Books, 2002. . Garance Franke-Ruta, "Virtual Politics," The American Prospect, Volume 14, Issue 9, October 1, 2003. Ghobadi, S., Clegg, S. 2014, 'these days will never be forgotten': Critical Mass Approach to Online Activism, Information and Organization, Vol 25 Issue 1, pp 2–71 Joss Hands, "@ is for Activism: Dissent Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture", Pluto Press, 2011. Amy Harmon, "Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again," New York Times, January 25, 2004. Mark Surman & Katherine Reilly, "Appropriating the Internet for Global Activism," Yes Magazine, Spring 2004. Carlos Watson, "The Rise of the Online Citizen," CNN.com, March 17, 2004, suggests that blogs may be "Democrats' answer to talk radio," citing a study by George Washington University showing that "online political citizens" outnumber Republicans almost 2 to 1 (49% to 27%). Matt Stoller, "When Mainstream Political Kibitzing Comes Online," The Blogging of the President 2004, April 4, 2004. Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (Regan Books, 2004), . John Emerson, "An Introduction to Activism on the Internet," January 2005. Michael Dartnell, Insurgency Online: Web Activism and Global Conflict University of Toronto Press, 2006. Molly Beutz Land, Networked Activism, Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 22, 2009, p. 205–244. (PDF, 225 kb) Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, New Media and Internet Activism: From the 'Battle of Seattle' to Blogging, New Media & Society / Vol 6; 2004, Pages 87–95. (PDF) Xu Ling, Network actions - new media and political confrontation in the Internet age (Chinese Edition) (Huazhong Normal University Press (December 1, 2011)), . Politics and technology Technology in society Activism by type Internet activism

Politics and technology

Politics and technology encompasses concepts, mechanisms, personalities, efforts, and social movements that include, but are not necessarily limited to, the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICTs). Scholars have begun to explore how internet technologies influence political communication and participation, especially in terms of what is known as the public sphere. The smartphone is a transformational communication technology that has features that include talk, text messaging, Internet access, electronic mail, faxing, pictures, video, and a wide variety of applications. Mobile devices are one of the important reasons for the rise of political participation and are now portrayed as a voting agent in the least developed countries. Increased availability of mobile phones, and subsequent access to the public sphere, has enhanced individuals' and groups' ability to bring attention to and organize around specialized issues. More recently, social media has emerged as one of the main platforms for politics. Millions of users can learn about politicians' policies and statements, interact with political leaders, organize, and voice their own opinions on political matters. Political campaigns are also using social media sites to reach voters using political advertising. There are also a wide variety of online tools that are meant to promote political participation and combat the spread of misinformation. A comparison of civic technology platforms can be useful in differentiating the different services offered by each platform. The digital public sphere The idea of the public sphere has generally come to be understood as the open social spaces and public spaces in which private citizens interact and share information and ideas relevant to the society. These can include, for example, town halls, public squares, markets, coffee shops, or what ancient Greeks called agoras. Scholars have argued that these spaces are vitally important for creating and maintaining an active and informed public in a democratic society. In Jürgen Habermas' book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, he defines the public sphere as "a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed." In principle, the public sphere should be open to all citizens, and free from influence from governments or private businesses. Habermas goes on to argue that: "A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public. They are then acting neither as business or professional people conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely." Howard Rheingold states that, "There is an intimate connection between informal conversations, the kind that take place in communities... and the ability of large social groups to govern themselves without monarchs or dictators." Rheingold and others have gone on to argue that virtual spaces created through the Internet and related information and communications technologies have led to the emergence of a new type of digital public sphere. Some scholars have conceptualized this alternately as a virtual public sphere or a networked public sphere, while still others have similarly described what they call a networked society or networked publics. Essentially, these new virtual spaces can be used in much the same way as traditional, offline spaces: that is, as a "free space" to discuss and debate ideas of public importance. Just as the public sphere is a combination of "every conversation in which private persons come together to form a public", the digital public sphere also comprises all forms of new media—such as chat rooms, website comment sections, and social media—in which private citizens engage in discourse as a public. Virtual spaces may overlap or interact with offline spaces as well, forming what has been called "hybrid networks". Scholars argue that social media affords increasing opportunities for political discourse and mobilization within the digital public sphere. Research has shown that increased use of social media correlates with increases in certain types of political engagement and participation. Rabia Karakaya Polat, a politics and technology scholar, finds that the Internet leads to a more informed and better society. The Internet enables information to be dispersed at an increased rate, compared to traditional means, at little cost. For most users, the amount of information can be helpful to understand various political atmospheres but can also overwhelm users. The digital public sphere thus has the potential to enliven democratic culture and enhance the ability of citizens to challenge the political and economic power of governments and corporations, such as through online protests, activism campaigns, and social movements. Other scholars have highlighted, alongside economic globalization, the role of Internet technologies in reaching across national borders to contribute to a growing transnational public sphere. Criticisms Social exclusion The traditional, offline public sphere has been criticized for not being as inclusive in practice as it is in theory. For example, Feminist scholars like Nancy Fraser have argued that the public sphere has historically not been as open or accessible to disadvantaged or marginalized groups in a society, such as women or people of color; therefore, such groups are forced to form their own separate public spheres, which she refers to as a counter-public or subaltern counter public (see ). Some scholars contend that online spaces are more open and thus may help to increase inclusive political participation from marginalized groups. In particular, anonymous online spaces should allow all individuals to speak with an equal voice to others. However, others have pointed out that many contemporary online spaces are not anonymous, such as Facebook. Avatars and social media profiles often portray an individual's offline identity, which can lead to practices of online discrimination and exclusion which mirror offline inequalities. Now, more and more historically disadvantaged or marginalized groups are also using Internet technology to carve out new online spaces for their own "networked counterpublics", such as through the use of hashtags like #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter. Another example of social exclusion happens when users homogenize their information by finding information that reinforces their own opinions or websites that have the most content or are promoted consistently. This can lead users to ignore sites that are less frequently promoted. Evidence of this was discovered by Steven M. Schneider, who found that although participation was overwhelmingly large on internet chat rooms discussing politics of abortion, the chat log was influenced and controlled by users that contributed the most content, with those who responded less frequently typically agreeing or adjusting their opinions based on the users who contributed more. The digital divide Another factor that affects access to the digital public sphere is the digital divide, which refers to how people from less developed countries tend to have less access to information and communications technologies compared to those from more developed countries. For example, the most developed regions of the world, such as North America and Western Europe, have the highest Internet penetration rates at over 80% each, while the least developed countries such as in Africa and South Asia have less than 30% each. On the other hand, the reduced cost and increasing availability of mobile devices such as smartphones throughout less developed regions is helping to reduce this disparity at an exponential rate. In just two years, between 2013 and 2015, the number of Internet users in developing nations has risen by 9%, according to the Pew Research Center. Other research has shown, though, that even within more developed countries like the United States, the digital divide continues to persist between upper and lower socioeconomic classes and between different education levels. Furthermore, scholars like Mark Warschauer argue that it is not just access to technology that matters, but the knowledge of how to put that technology to use in meaningful ways. Use of Bots and Sock Puppets Internet bots, also known as web robots, robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes, and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. More than half of all web traffic is generated by bots. Software can detect and confirm the presence of bots through qualitative coding. An example would be the Bot-a-meter, developed by Indiana University, which evaluates 7 different factors to determine whether or not a request is generated by a bot. A Sock Puppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who is pretending to be another person. The term has come to designate other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization, to manipulate public opinion, to skew online voting results, or to evade blocks. There is significant evidence to indicate that the Internet Research Agency, a group of professional Russian trolls, created fake accounts on major networking sites and online newspapers, to promote specific Ukrainian, Middle Eastern, and American political issues, even advocating for Trump as early as December 2015. Ease of manipulation Citizens involved in politics have experienced a sense of security while engaged in physically attending a polling place or submitting their vote through mail. Such experiences now have digital counterparts. In areas such as the United States, online voting has been developing in the form of smartphone applications or secure websites. Online voting allows more citizens to exercise their right to vote by breaking down the physical barriers that may keep a voter away from the polls. As an unwanted result, online voting is easier to manipulate. Social media apps such as Instagram or Facebook have taken the initiative to get people registered and motivated to go and vote. Despite their efforts, there are social media accounts engineered to misinform the public, causing a jaded perspective toward electable candidates or understanding policies. Another way users are manipulated is by directly interfering with the vote. In the 2016 U.S. election, J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist and director of computer security at the University of Michigan, advocated for the Clinton campaign to request a recount in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which were thought to be lost by her through the computer manipulation of voting machines. In the 2020 Iowa caucuses, the Iowa Democratic Party used a new mobile app to count and transmit primary election results live in real-time. Official users of the application suffered from reporting issues, leading to incomplete data, and a bottleneck during transmission. Since the 2020 Iowa caucuses, other state's Democratic parties have declined to use the Shadow Inc. application for their state's primaries. Marian Schneider, the president of Verified Voting, released a statement that says, "The situation with Iowa's caucus reveals the risks associated with technology, in this case with a mobile app, but more importantly that there needs to be a low-tech solution in order to recover from technological failures -- no matter the cause, There needs to be a way to monitor, detect, respond and recover. It's clear that mobile apps are not ready for prime time, but thankfully Iowa has paper records of their vote totals and will be able to release results from those records." Social Media as a channel of distribution Studies show that social media allows politicians to easily engage with the general public without the use of mainstream media. This allows them to express and present themselves however they deem fit, without a filter or fact checking. This is evident from recent US presidential campaigns, where voters were able to connect with Trump, not only as a politician but as a person. Studies show, "The fact that Trump delegated much [less] social media work to professionals than either of the Obama campaigns and the 2016 Clinton campaign meant that his candidate image on social media was much closer to his self-presentation. To a degree, Trump therefore came across as more consistent an authentic compared to Clinton, [an] image that was strengthened by his position as a newcomer in politics." Digital technology is shaping the new age of electoral politics, rather than "breaking" it; and it is creating a more transparent view and perspective of electoral politics for the voter. Digital technology allows people to publish information that could be faulty and unreliable but could be taken seriously and shift political opinion, thus possibly leading to an unfit politician being elected to office. Furthermore, digital technology can also be used to exploit the lack of quality journalism, as it can be used for political manipulation through the use of "trolls and bots, disguised as ordinary citizens, [have become] a weapon of choice for governments and political leaders to shape online conversations. Governments in Turkey, China, Israel, Russia and the United Kingdom are known to have deployed thousands of hired social media operatives who run multiple accounts to shift or control public opinion." These political manipulation may also come in another form, in which they are facilitated by said platforms due to financial support from advertisers, this can create false or targeted advertising campaigns that aim to manipulate voter thinking. These tactics may be used by officials up for election to boost campaign support, or by an outside actor such as a foreign government supporting a politician or a party that would benefit them internationally, therefore directly manipulating political thought within a society. Leapfrog democracies 'Leapfrogging' originally denoted those societies that—through possibly radical, but even small and incremental, innovation—experience enormous development in the fields of industrial organization and economic growth and "leapfrog" once dominant rivals. It was a term first used at the Personal Democracy Forum in 2014. The term can be applied to a country's governmental institutions, the country thus becoming a "leapfrog democracy". Tunisia An example of this is the new Tunisian constitution. Learning from America and other countries, Tunisia developed a constitution that provides more rights than typical constitutions with regard to issues concerning climate change, healthcare, women's rights, and workers' rights. They have provided rights that the United States' government does not guarantee its citizens. Tunisia has set the stage for many other countries to follow in their footsteps, including Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Although these countries' attempts at democratic government have not been nearly as successful as Tunisia's. Estonia Another example of a leapfrog democracy is Estonia, which became one of the first countries to employ online voting. Nearly 99% of their public services are available online, and a reported 44% of Estonia citizens use them. Electronic voting in Estonia has been in place since 2005, and a citizen can cast their vote through an app on their mobile device. Through Estonia's national ID infrastructure, National ID cards have the ability to perform cryptographic functions to authenticate citizens' access to different websites and place legally binding signatures on documents, if needed. These cards work through the use of two different RSA key pairs. However, there are still some drawbacks to this voting process, as there are inadequate procedural controls that are inexplicably changed or are not followed, lax operational security, and insufficient transparency. These weaknesses can allow for client-side attacks on the voting system. Additionally, in 2014, Estonia became the first country to introduce an e-Residency program, with the intention of “[creating] a worldwide virtual business environment, where people from both the developed and developing countries can easily become entrepreneurs and start doing business anywhere in the world.” This program allows individuals from across the globe to digitally apply for Estonian citizenship by simply filling out an online application form and passing a background check. Presence of online tools for political participation With the increasing use of technology in the political sphere, many new platforms and apps have emerged in an attempt to provide unbiased information to the general public in a manner that is accessible to all. Many of these apps hope to be able to spread this information so that voters may be more informed about politics and make more of an informed decisions when voting. Some examples are Liquid.us, Countable, Capitol Bells, Fiscalnote, and Councilmatic. Technology is progressing rapidly to making a significant impact on future campaigns. A comparison of civic technology platforms highlights the similarities and differences between different online tools used for political participation. iSideWith iSideWith is an application that seeks to provide voters with an educated guess of who they would politically side with. They have an in-depth survey on their website that asks about the users' political opinion on common issues currently discussed within the government, to give the voter a ranking of which politician best aligns with their political stance. The more time the voters spend filling out the survey, the more accurate the results will align with their political stance. The application is available in multiple countries, such as the United States, Canada, India, Brazil, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. Change.org Change.org is a website that allows people to take a stance on something they agree or disagree with and actually petition for others to rally behind their cause. People can search for existing petitions concerning a cause that they feel strongly about, or they have the option of starting their own. The website displays past successful petitions that have made an impact. The petition does not necessarily have to be related to politics. There are many surveys that could be targeting different issues within their neighborhood but can range up to a social issue that they believe the whole world should be aware about. D21 D21 is a platform that allows people to participate in voting on issues through a form of "modern democracy". It is also known as the D21 – Janeček method, which allows people to cast both a negative and a positive vote. D21 wishes to accurately inform users about different issues happening within their community and provide them with a platform for voicing their opinions. The platform is used mainly in the Czech Republic to target corruption within the Czech government. Though it has not yet been used in any general elections, D21 – Janeček method has been used in several participatory budgeting programs around the world, including New York City, in the United States. The Czech government introduced the game Prezident 21, which is an interactive website created to aid people in familiarizing themselves with the D21 system. Verified Voting Verified Voting is a website that uses its online presence to discourage the movement of voting towards a more digital age. In a section about Internet Voting, they speak about the dangers and information leaks that come with using the Internet, or anything digital, to cast votes, even with blockchain. Verified Voting defines Internet voting to include email, fax voting, or any voting through an online portal. This is due to the fact that any form of electronic voting can leave the vote susceptible to a large number of security threats, including cyber-attacks that can skew voting results. According to NIST, it is difficult to make sure that votes are coming from verified and registered voters and have not been changed in transit. This is difficult to verify over the Internet and thus makes casting votes in person and through paper ballots more effective and safe, even with the flaws of that process. Verified Voting has a "verifier" visualizer to provide detail on election equipment used by localities in all the states. Blockchain voting platforms Blockchain voting is the concept of traditional paper voting becoming digitized through a voting-token format where voting information is decentralized and data is easily accounted for. With the rise of technology in the current political environment, blockchain voting, to combat voter fraud and increase democratic participation, has become an increasingly discussed topic. Blockchain voting is a digital ledger, which relies on a network of nodes that encrypt and protect information from being corrupted by a single party. Platforms in the blockchain voting market aim to increase efficiency and transparency in voting systems where casting and counting votes are simplified and verifiable. Some example platforms include Democracy Earth, Polyas, Votem, Boulé, and Horizon State. Democracy Earth Democracy Earth is a nonprofit startup with the goal of improving voting systems by utilizing the blockchain. Founded by Santiago Siri, whose vision is to create "political cryptocurrency" by utilizing blockchain-generated tokens from Democracy Earth's processes, with which users cast their votes. With blockchain voting technology, the need for a centralized government authority is removed, along with possible bias, censorship, or corruption affecting the voting and tabulation process. When faced with criticisms and concerns about the financial aspects of the vote token, Siri explains that Democracy Earth plans to mint a maximum of 500 million tokens, each priced at 12 cents, therefore spawning a $60 million market. Current plans within Democracy Earth call for employees to be compensated in the form of these vote tokens. Polyas Polyas was established in 1996 with its technology being used to organize the first online election in Finland, involving 30,000 votes and 3 languages. Started by Wolfgang Jung, the company and its software was eventually passed on to a company called Micromata, which created a new spin-off corporation in 2012 called POLYAS GmbH. Polyas uses private, local blockchains to run its voting procedures, which differs from the general decentralized blockchains. The current services Polyas provide are online voting, on-site live voting, and resolution and amendment voting to customers that range from youth parliaments to corporations. Currently, the company is looking to optimize its "universal verifiability" feature through the reduction of slow communication times while ensuring ballots are counted accurately. Votem Votem is a mobile voting platform that was created in 2014 by Pete Martin with a goal of having 1 billion voters on their platform by 2025. Through blockchain technology, Votem offers a variety of services such as online voter registration, accessible voting for those with disabilities, and electronic ballot marking. In August 2017, Votem had been inducted into the U.S Election Assistance Commission's voting systems testing and certification program. With partnerships including the Blockchain Research Institute and the National Association of the Secretary of State, Votem looks to target a range of elections, ranging from small, private elections to government elections. Boulé Boulé was founded in 2017 and is a blockchain voting system that focuses on campaign integrity through security and transparency. Boulé is powered through the blockchain platform of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Boulé has its own form of voting currency, referred to as Boulé tokens (BOU), and launched a pre-sale in August 2017 that was distributed until hitting a ceiling of 10,000. Boulé specializes in using biometric facial recognition, alongside other mobile identification methods, and encryption to identify and provide voter anonymity. Horizon State Horizon State, led by CEO Tim Goggin, offers two main products, one being a "tamper-resistant digital ballot box" and the second being an engagement platform for users in voting processes. Horizon State utilizes preferential voting and weighted voting systems to manage candidate selection. Horizon State currently serves a few customer groups, including governments, councils, unions, political parties, corporations, and broadcasters. The company was named a "Technology Pioneer" by the World Economic Forum as well as being a finalist in Blockchain Australia's Government Project of the Year. GovTech and Politics GovTech denotes the concept of utilizing technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence to increase accessibility to and efficiency in government and public policy. GovTech is a growing industry around the world, with an estimated worth of $400 billion in total market value. Different subcategories of GovTech exist: for example, LegisTech, which regards legislative innovation to enhance cooperation between citizens, public servants, and corporations. The growth in the GovTech industry has spurred innovation within the private sector; however, there is also a rising number of concerns surrounding private corporations providing software for government use. LabHacker An example of LegisTech is LabHacker, which is a laboratory that uses data analysis to track hotly debated topics in the Brazilian parliament and publicly presents the data to keep citizens and other government officials informed. It is an initiative directed by Walternor Brandão under the auspices of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. LabHacker embraces 5 main "pillars" or ideals: participation, transparency, experimentation, collaboration, and inspiration. See also Automate This Comparison of civic technology platforms Cultural lag Digital rights E-democracy E-government Electronic voting The End of Work Fully Automated Luxury Communism Hashtag activism Internet activism Internet censorship Internet freedom Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work Media activism Neo-Luddism Netizen Online deliberation Online petition Post-work society Public hypersphere The Right to Be Lazy Right to repair Technocracy Technogaianism Technology policy Techno-progressivism The War on Normal People References

Liberalism (international relations)

Liberalism is a school of thought within international relations theory which revolves around three interrelated principles: Rejection of power politics as the only possible outcome of international relations; it questions security/warfare principles of realism Mutual benefits and international cooperation The role of international organizations and nongovernmental actors in shaping state preferences and policy choices This school of thought emphasizes three factors that encourage more cooperation and less conflict among states: International institutions, such as the United Nations, which provide a forum to resolve disputes in non-violent ways International trade because, when countries' economies are interconnected through trade, they are less likely to go to war with each other Spread of democracy, as well-established democracies are assumed to not go to war with one another, so if there are more democracies, interstate war will be less frequent Liberals believe that international institutions play a key role in cooperation among states via interdependence. There are three main components of interdependence. States interact in various ways, through economic, financial, and cultural means; security tends to not be the primary goal in state-to-state interactions; and military forces are not typically used. Liberals also argue that international diplomacy can be a very effective way to get states to interact with each other honestly and support nonviolent solutions to problems. With the proper institutions and diplomacy, Liberals believe that states can work together to maximize prosperity and minimize conflict. Liberalism is one of the main schools of international relations theory. Liberalism comes from the Latin liber meaning "free", referring originally to the philosophy of freedom. Its roots lie in the broader liberal thought originating in the Enlightenment. The central issues that it seeks to address are the problems of achieving lasting peace and cooperation in international relations, and the various methods that could contribute to their achievement. Supporters of liberalism often believe in the spreading of democracy through cooperation. Areas of study Broad areas of study within liberal international relations theory include: Democratic peace theory, and, more broadly, the effect of domestic political regime types and domestic politics on international relations; Commercial peace theory, arguing that free trade has pacifying effects on international relations. Current explorations of globalization and interdependence are a broader continuation of this line of inquiry; Institutional peace theory, which attempts to demonstrate how cooperation can be sustained in anarchy, how long-term interests can be pursued over short-term interests, and how actors may realize absolute gains instead of seeking relative gains; Related, the effect of international organizations on international politics, both in their role as forums for states to pursue their interests, and in their role as actors in their own right; The role of international law in moderating or constraining state behavior; The effects of liberal norms on international politics, especially relations between liberal states; The role of various types of unions in international politics (relations), such as highly institutionalized alliances (e.g. NATO), confederations, leagues, federations, and evolving entities like the European Union; and, The role, or potential role, of cosmopolitanism in transcending the state and affecting international relations. History Early beginnings Liberalism originally arose from both deep scholarly and philosophical roots. With the theory's prime principle being international cooperation and peace, early influences are seen in some bigger religious practices sharing the same goal. It was later in the 17th and 18th centuries in which political liberalism began to take a form that challenged nobility and inherited inequality. Followed shortly after was the Enlightenment where liberal ideals began to develop with works by philosophers such as Voltaire, Locke, Smith, and German thinker Immanuel Kant. In part, liberal scholars were influenced by the Thirty Years' War and the Enlightenment. The length and disastrous effects of the Thirty Years' War caused a common disdain for warfare throughout much of Europe. Thinkers, like Locke and Kant, wrote about what they saw in the world around them. They believed that war is fundamentally unpopular and that man is born with certain rights because the end of the Thirty Years' War proved these ideas to them. John Locke discusses many ideas that are now attributed to Liberalism in Two Treatises of Government, published in 1689. In his second treatise, Locke comments on society and outlines the importance of natural rights and laws. Locke believes that people are born as blank slates without any preordained ideas or notions. This state is known as the State of Nature because it shows people in their most barbaric form. As people grow, their experiences begin to shape their thoughts and actions. They are naturally in the State of Nature until they choose not to be, until something changes their barbaric nature. Locke says that, civil government can remedy this anarchy. When it comes to the Law of Nature, people are more likely to act rationally when there is a government in place because there are laws and consequences to abide by. Locke argues that civil government can help people gain the basic human rights of health, liberty and possession. Governments that grant these rights and enforce laws benefit the world. Many of these ideas have influenced leaders such as the Founding Fathers during the American Revolution and French revolutionaries during the French Revolution. In Kant's To Perpetual Peace, the philosopher set the way by forming guidelines to create a peace program to be applied by nations. This program would require cooperation between states as well as the mutual pursuit of secure freedom and shared benefits. One such idea was the Democratic Peace Theory. In To Perpetual Peace, Kant put forth the idea that democracies do not fight wars because leaders were too worried about re-election. Because war was naturally unpopular, Kant thought that leaders would avoid burdening voters with its costs. After seeing success in intertwining states through economic coalition, liberal supporters began to believe that warfare was not always an inevitable part of international relations. Support of liberal political theory continued to grow from there. Neoliberalism Kant's democratic peace theory has since been revised by neoliberals like Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye. These theorists have seen that democracies do in fact fight wars. However, democracies do not fight wars with other democracies because of capitalist ties. Democracies are economically dependent and therefore are more likely to resolve issues diplomatically. Furthermore, citizens in democracies are less likely to think of citizens in other democracies as enemies because of shared morals. Kant's original ideas have influenced liberal scholars and have had a large impact on liberal thought. See also Commercial liberalism Idealism in international relations Liberal international order References International relations theory Liberalism

Comparing Media Systems

Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (2004), by Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini, is a seminal study in the field of international comparative media system research. The study compares media systems of 18 Western democracies including nine Northern European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland), five Southern European countries (France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and four Atlantic countries (Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States). The conceptual framework developed in this study turned out to be an important contribution to the field of the comparative media systems research because it provides a systematic and applicable approach to analyze differences and similarities of the relationships between media and politics. Since the publication of Hallin and Mancini's book in 2004, there has been a vivid academic discussion (see ), particularly with regards to the adequacy of their suggested framework for understanding variations between different systems around the world, located within different cultural, social, and/or political contexts. As a consequence, a flourishing progression within the field of comparative media system research can be stated. Contextualization Comparative media system research The field of comparative media system research has a long tradition reaching back to the study Four Theories of the Press by Siebert, Peterson and Schramm from 1956. This book was the origin of the academic debate on comparing and classifying media systems, whereas it was normatively biased and strongly influenced by the ideologies of the Cold War era. Though this approach has often been criticized (e.g. because of its ethnocentricity, inconsistent structure, questionable typologies, or its scant empirical basis of the analysis), it was a starting point for following normative media theories and the development of the field. Comparative media system research has been subject to several changes since its establishment. The number of categories to describe media systems grew and approaches got more complex. Another trend is that researchers factor in political systems more intensively to explain and compare media systems. A more fundamental development is the shift from normative to empirically based approaches. There are still problems of comparative media studies in various countries which must be faced. The validity of the country sampling procedure is one problem, beside the adequate definition of the scope of the comparison to meet the specific national features of the cases, and the definition of adequate indicators as the basis for the comparison. Additionally, the developed models are still relatively static not being able to describe changes adequately, and online media have been largely neglected though their importance has been increasing since the late 1990s. However, comparative media system studies are an important instrument for contemporary communication phenomena under study. The comparative design is a bridge between traditional and nation-centered studies of media systems and new media as well as globalization perspectives. Jakubowicz points out that contemporarily comparative media system analyses are seen as the key approach to understand globalization processes of the media. Systematic classification of the approach Comparative media system research is one possible approach to study transnational and border-crossing communication processes worldwide. A very useful and heuristic systematization of the vast field of transnational and border-crossing communication comes from Wessler and Brüggemann (2012) (see also Dimensions of analysis). According to this heuristic, the approach from Hallin and Mancini can be identified and localized as one specific combination of the components along these three dimensions of analysis. Their perspective of analysis is focused on a systematic comparison of media systems within Western democracies. Consequently, their level of analysis concentrates on media systems within the context of nation states. Their main objectives are media-politics relations primarily on the level of structures, but in addition to it, they consider all objects of analysis to gain an encompassing understanding of these relations. Objectives Developing a unifying conceptual framework for comparing media systems was essential for Hallin and Mancini. They focused on theory building rather than testing theories, as the then prevailing Four Theories of the Press and its subsequent normative modifications showed deficiencies in adequately analyzing present media systems. Consequently, Hallin and Mancini focused on an empirical “by treating these systems not as abstract ideals but as concrete social formations that developed under particular historical conditions.” Hallin and Mancini initially chose a “most similar systems”-design – that is, comparing systems which are quite similar according to their structures and functioning to understand in which aspects they differ from each other to discover specific characteristics of each single system. Following this design, they conceptualized dimensions containing particular variables to analyze similarities and differences between the 18 countries under study. Their objective was to find more or less coherent patterns within their sample which could possibly be condensed into ideal types in terms of Max Weber’s conception of ideal types. Since the dimensions and the resulting models cover specifically the media-politics relations of the Western world, Hallin and Mancini do not claim universal validity of their framework. Hence, it must be reconceptualized to meet the specific conditions of media-politics relations beyond the Western world. Hallin and Mancini’s framework Hallin and Mancini's conceptual framework consists of the four dimensions structure of media markets, political parallelism, professionalization of journalism, and the role of the state with regards to media systems; and of the five dimensions the role of the state, type of democracy (consensus vs. majoritarian), type of pluralism (individual vs. organized), degree of rational-legal authority, and degree of pluralism (moderate vs. polarized) with reference to the political contexts of media systems. According to specific constellations of the variables within these dimensions, Hallin and Mancini conceptualized the three models of media and politics. Dimensions: media systems Structure of media markets The structure of media markets is concerned with the development of a mass press. The authors highlight several variables which can be used to describe the characteristics of press systems: newspaper circulation rates newspaper-readership relationship (elite- vs. mass-orientation) gender differences in newspaper reach relative importance of newspapers and television as sources of news ratio of local, regional, and national newspapers degree of a clear separation between sensationalist mass press and quality press regional or linguistic segmentation of media markets influence of bordering countries on the national media system Political parallelism Political parallelism refers to the “fact that media in some countries have distinct political orientations, while media in other countries do not.” The authors established 5 factors or indicators to assess the extent of political parallelism: the extent of political orientation within media content organizational connections between the media and political organizations the tendency of media personnel to take part in political life partisanship of media audiences journalists’ role orientation and practices (e.g. journalists as advocates vs. neutral arbiters, opinion-oriented vs. information-oriented reporting style, separating vs. blending commentary and information) internal pluralism (i.e. covering different opinions and perspectives within one medium) or external pluralism (i.e. covering different opinions and perspectives within one media branch (e.g. the press system)) the regulation of public service broadcasting (e.g. controlled by the government, insulated from direct political control, proportional representation of political parties or socially relevant groups) Professionalization of journalism The professionalization refers to the continuum of independent to instrumentalized journalism: degree of autonomy development of distinct professional norms and rules (e.g. practical routines or ethical principles) public service orientation of the journalists (i.e. orientation towards an ethic of public service rather than towards interests of individual persons) Role of the state This dimension stresses the power the political system has in shaping the structure and functioning of a media system. “But there are considerable differences in the extent of state intervention as well as in the forms it takes.” Hallin and Mancini use the following variables to cover this fourth dimension: censorship or other types of political pressure endowment of the media with economic subsidies ownership of media- or telecommunication-organizations provision of regulations for the media (laws, licensing, etc.) the state as an information source and “primary definer” of news Ultimately, the interrelations of these four dimensions are complex. They have to be assessed empirically for every new case under study. Consequently, they may “influence one another in important ways, but also vary independently.” Dimensions: political context In a next step, Hallin and Mancini identified five core dimensions to assess the political contexts of media systems. They took relevant concepts from the literatures on comparative politics and political sociology to gain a better understanding of the political influences on the development of media systems. The resulting dimensions are presented as dichotomies, but they are just poles on a continuum. The first dimension is the role of the state. It is conceptualized by the distinction between liberal democracies and welfare state democracies. The main difference between these two categories is the interventional activity of the state (e.g. funding vs. free market). This difference takes shape in the relative importance of private business or social institutions within the political system in question. A further important dichotomic dimension is labeled consensus vs. majoritarian democracy. Majoritarian democratic systems contain two dominating parties and, due to the plurality voting system, the winning party actually concentrates the political power so that there is a clear distinction between the government and the opposition. Furthermore, the Cabinet predominantly influences political decision processes. By contrast, the consensus politics model encompasses a multi-party system which is based on the power sharing principle according to the proportional representation so that compromise and cooperation between the opposing forces are central. Additionally, there is a separation of power between legislative and executive. The third dimension is the distinction between individual and organized pluralism resp. liberalism and corporatism. Individual pluralism is defined as the organization of the political representation “in terms of the relation between governing institutions and individual citizens, along with a multiplicity of competing ‘special interests’”. On the other hand, the focus on organized social groups is more important within organized pluralism systems. Thus, corporatism includes the “formal integration of social groups into the political process”. Hallin and Mancini identify the distinction between rational-legal authority and clientelism as another crucial dimension. Following Max Weber, Hallin and Mancini use the term rational-legal authority in its meaning as a form of governance whose main influence is maintained through formal and universalistic rules of procedure, i.e. an independent and autonomous administrative apparatus not affected by political and economic interests or lobbyism. This apparatus is the main institution of an efficient rational-legal system. In contrast, the orientation on common interests is much weaker within clientelism systems because individual interests and private relationships are the main forces maintaining the social organization. Consequently, “access to social resources is controlled by patrons and delivered to clients in exchange for deference and various forms of support”. The final dimension is conceptualized by the distinction between moderate and polarized pluralism. Low consensus, challenged legitimacy of the political organizations or system, and deep cleavages within the political landscape are the main characteristics of polarized pluralism. An important indicator is the existence of anti-system parties and factions. Compared to this, moderate pluralism is mainly characterized by stronger tendencies toward the center, lower ideological differences between the political parties, greater acceptance of the political system, and better chances to gain consensus during political controversies. The three models of media and politics By using the aforementioned dimensions, Hallin and Mancini deduced and conceptualized three ideal models of media-politics relations (‘ideal’ according to Max Weber). Hallin and Mancini could identify specific patterns by geographical regions which were crucial for labeling the individual models: The Three Models: Media System Characteristics The Three Models: Political System Characteristics Restrictions Hallin and Mancini point to restrictions of their three models which have to be considered in order not to overvalue the validity and significance of them. First of all, they focus on nation states and this level of analysis allows a specific perspective on media-politics relations but misses other phenomena of importance (e.g. transnational developments of media markets in Europe). Another concern is that the cases summarized within the single models vary enormously (especially within the Liberal model). Consequently, the models show a wide range of cases which might blur their distinction. Furthermore, the media systems within the analyzed countries might not be homogeneous (e.g. the structural differences between the print system and the broadcasting system in Germany). Because of the differences within the countries and the interferences between them, it is difficult to treat the 18 countries analyzed, as single cases because they depend on each other and influence each other. A final point is the dynamic of media systems because they cannot be assumed as static entities. Hence, media systems will always progress and there will always be changes resulting from those developing processes, so that reconsidering the characteristics of the mentioned models becomes necessary over time. Consequently, Hallin and Mancini point out in subsequent discussions that their models are not intended to be universal typologies which can be applied to other cases mechanically. Instead, they suggest rather focusing on the dimensions and their applicability and adaption to analyze other media systems adequately – e.g. regarding Eastern European media systems, they propose to attach more weight to the role of the state and especially to the role of civil society to understand these systems appropriately. The convergence-thesis At the end of their book, Hallin and Mancini discuss the convergence- or homogenization-thesis. The basis for their argument is their observation of several transformation processes that take place especially in Europe. The most important processes are the European integration, politically as well as with regards to the media (e.g. European media laws), the decline of traditional political mass parties, the American influence on the professionalization of journalism, and finally the commercialization of the media markets in Europe. These are the main reasons why Hallin and Mancini conclude, that the European countries might be pushed toward the Liberal model. They even go one step further and hypothesize that the core forces of that homogenization- or convergence-process might be valid for other parts of the world. However, they point out that there might be limitations to this process as well because the elements of the process are anchored in the structural differences between the political systems around the world. Recent developments In this section, some recent issues and topics are mentioned because they arose from an ongoing scholar discussion about the applicability of Hallin and Mancini's framework to other, especially non-Western countries: Some researchers reflect upon the nature of the Polarized Pluralist model and its alleged applicability for many media systems beyond the Western world, for it seems to be a catch-all residual model. A related issue is the question whether the Polarized Pluralist model involves negative normative implications (compared to the other two models) what would turn it into an inferior or less-well developed model. Many researchers challenge the convergence-thesis because they identify serious differences between the cases they study and those Hallin and Mancini focused on, so that they conclude that globalization will rather result in hybridization- than in convergence-processes. Concerning Western media systems, Hardy for example notes to include matters of ownership concentration and cultural processes to clarify and meet the complexity of convergence-processes. A related point is the total exclusion of influential new online technologies and media which are of central importance for understanding transformations of media systems as well as the communication patterns within, between and beyond them. Additionally, Hardy criticizes the neglect of all forms of entertainment media. One of the main debates is about the extent to which the variables Hallin and Mancini use to measure the dimensions must be adapted to non-Western cases to meet their particular conditions. Others criticize Hallin and Mancini's concentration on media-politics relations because this perspective neglects interrelated variables, e.g. economic or cultural contexts. Concerning transnational and global developments, relations and influences around the world, some researches ask the question whether the nation state as a level of analysis is still appropriate. For example, Jakubowicz argues that this methodological nationalism (cf. Mihelj et al., 2008) is inappropriate, for “media systems are no longer exclusively related to single political systems”, whereas Hardy notes that “[t]he political, legislative, cultural and social dimensions of the state are not simply diminished by globalisation” and that “communication systems remain, to a significant degree, national in organization and orientation.” A related debate is about the adequacy of focusing on structures and systems, as Hallin and Mancini did it, rather than considering more dynamic agencies and processes which cannot be covered entirely by a system-approach. Hallin and Mancini decided to use a model- or ideal types-approach to explain certain patterns of their cases. Other researchers remark on the risk of generalizing and abstracting too early within the research process. This vivid discussion reflects the status of Hallin and Mancini's approach, as it is currently “the most well-developed analytical framework so far for understanding the relationship between media and political systems.” Consequently, there are many studies that apply and adapt the framework for their cases under study. For example, Dobek-Ostrowska and colleagues published the edited volume Comparative Media Systems. European and Global Perspective (2010) which contains comparative studies referring to or applying Hallin and Mancini's framework for Central and Eastern Europe media systems. Hallin and Mancini published the edited volume Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (2012) which gives a comprehensive overview with a more global perspective. Case studies from the media systems of Israel, Poland, Baltic states, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, China, and the Arab world are discussed by the contributors and a methodological reflection of Hallin and Mancini's framework with regards to non-Western media systems is added. Further research was conducted by Jonathan Hardy, who analyzed the implications of transformation processes shaping contemporary media systems. As Hallin and Mancini did, Hardy focuses on media systems within Western democracies (actually 18 countries) and he adjoins their convergence thesis while he concentrates on print and broadcasting (especially TV). He chooses four paradigms (namely the liberal democratic theory, neoliberalism, libertarianism, and the critical political economy) as an analytical framework to examine relationships between media and politics, media and policy, media ownership and transnationalisation processes. Furthermore, Roger Blum's approach (2005) is an attempt to broaden and complete Hallin and Mancini's models by adding and modifying dimensions (he developed nine instead of four dimensions), classifying them as liberal, regulated, or as in between these two poles. Blum identifies six models of media systems, but he does “not explain how he created the models and why no other combination of specification is necessary”, so Blum's framework is still in need for empirical support. Other studies focus on a single aspect of Hallin and Mancini's framework and analyze it in detail. For example, Curran and his colleagues (2009) study the implications of the movement towards rather market-driven media and compare news contents and public knowledge of public affairs within different media systems by testing the hypothesis, “that market-based systems (…) impede the exercise of informed citizenship.” There were also several conferences “triggered” by Hallin and Mancini's framework; for example the International Media and Communication Conference “Comparing Media Systems: West Meets East” organized by the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Wroclaw (April 23–25, 2007), where more than 100 researchers attained or conferences initiated by Hallin and Mancini themselves in Perugia in 2007, and in San Diego in 2009. Comparative media system research is an encouraging and important subfield of mediated cross-border communication. And Hallin and Mancini's framework has been contributing to its consolidation and progression. See also Political parallelism Comparative politics Political sociology Transformation processes (media systems) Mediated cross-border communication Footnotes References Altschull, J. H. (1984). Agents of Power: The Role of the News Media in Human Affairs. New York: Longman. Blum, R. (2005). Bausteine zu einer Theorie der Mediensysteme. Medienwissenschaft Schweiz, 2, 5–11. Brüggemann, M., & Wessler, H. (2011). Transnationale Kommunikation: Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Curran, J., Iyengar, S., Lund, A. B., & Salovaara-Moring, I. (2009). Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy: A Comparative Study. European Journal of Communication, 24(5), 5-26. Dobek-Ostrowska, B., Glowacki, M., Jakubowicz, K., & Sükösd, M. (2010). Editors’ Introduction. In B. Dobek-Ostrowska, M. Glowacki, K. Jakubowicz, & M. Sükösd (Eds.), Comparative Media Systems. European and Global Perspective (pp. vii-ix). Budapest: CEU Press. Graber, D. A. (2006). [Review of the book Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, by D. C. Hallin & P. Mancini]. Political Psychology, 27, 935–936. Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2010). Preface. In B. Dobek-Ostrowska, M. Glowacki, K. Jakubowicz, & M. Sükösd (Eds.), Comparative Media Systems. European and Global Perspective (pp. xi-xiv). Budapest: CEU Press. Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2012a). Introduction. In D. C. Hallin & P. Mancini (Eds.), Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (pp. 1–7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hallin, D. C., & Mancini, P. (2012b). Conclusion. In D. C. Hallin & P. Mancini (Eds.), Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (pp. 278–304). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hardy, J. (2008). Western Media Systems. London: Routledge. Jakubowicz, K. (2010). Introduction. Media Systems Research: An Overview. In B. Dobek-Ostrowska, M. Glowacki, K. Jakubowicz, & M. Sükösd (Eds.), Comparative Media Systems. European and Global Perspective (pp. 1–21). Budapest: CEU Press. Jones, T. M. (2008). [Review of the book Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, by D. C. Hallin & P. Mancini]. Comparative Political Studies, 41(1), 128–131. Kelly, Mary (1983). Influences on broadcasting policies for election coverage. In J. G. Blumler (Ed.), Communicating to voters. Television in the first European parliamentary elections (pp. 65–82). London: Sage. McQuail, D. (1987). Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. London: Sage. Mihelj, S., Koenig, T., Downey, J., & Stetka, V. (2008). Mapping European Ideoscapes. European Societies, 10(2), 275–301. Musso, P., & Pineau, G. (1985). El audiovisual entre el estado y el mercado: Los ejemplos Italiano y francés. Telos, 27, 47–56. Patterson, T. E. (2007). [Review of the book Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, by D. C. Hallin & P. Mancini]. Political Communication, 24, 329–331. Picard, Robert G. (1985). The Press and the Decline of Democracy: The Democratic Socialist Response in Public Policy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Seymour-Ure, C. (1974). The Political impact of mass media. London, UK: Constable. Siebert, F. S., Peterson, T., Schram, W. (1956). Four Theories of the Press. The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Sparks, C. (2006). Comparing Transitions Poland, Russia, China. In H. Zankova (Ed.), Democracy, Technology, and Freedom of Expression. Articles and documents of the Council of Europe (pp. 21–35). Sofia: State Agency for Information Technologies and Communication. Traquina, N. (1995). Portuguese television: The politics of savage deregulation. Media, Culture & Society, 17, 223–238. Wessler, H., & Brüggemann, M. (2012, in press). Transnationale Kommunikation. Eine Einführung. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Williams, R. (1968). Communications. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. External links MediaAcT is a comparative research project on media accountability systems in EU member states. The Media Research Hub is a resource for researchers, advocates, and practitioners working for a more democratic and participatory public sphere. Paolo Mancini’s profile on the University of Perugia website (in Italian). Daniel C. Hallin’s profile on the UCSD Department of Communication website. 2004 non-fiction books Books about the media Media studies Political science books Cambridge University Press books

Socialism

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is considered the standard left wing ideology in most countries of the world. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations. Socialist systems divide into non-market and market forms. A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system. Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive. Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence, heading national governments in several countries. Socialist politics have been internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and other times independent and critical of them, and present in industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, in the post-war period social democracy embraced a mixed economy based on Keynesianism within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. The socialist political movement includes political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that socialists associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify anti-capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production. By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century. Many socialists also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism. While the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to socialism's widespread association with the Soviet economic model, academics have noted that some Western European countries have been governed by socialist parties or have mixed economies that are sometimes called "democratic socialist". Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world, while many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced "Third Way" politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare, while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics. Socialism experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 2010s, most prominently in the form of democratic socialism. Etymology According to Andrew Vincent, "[t]he word 'socialism' finds its root in the Latin , which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was . This latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen". Initial use of socialism was claimed by Pierre Leroux, who alleged he first used the term in the Parisian journal in 1832. Leroux was a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Socialism contrasted with the liberal doctrine of individualism that emphasized the moral worth of the individual while stressing that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another. The original utopian socialists condemned this doctrine of individualism for failing to address social concerns during the Industrial Revolution, including poverty, oppression, and vast wealth inequality. They viewed their society as harming community life by basing society on competition. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources. Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific administration and the application of scientific understanding to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed to organise production and ownership via cooperatives. Socialism is also attributed in France to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud while in Britain it is attributed to Owen, who became one of the fathers of the cooperative movement. The definition and usage of socialism settled by the 1860s, with the term socialist replacing associationist, co-operative, mutualist and collectivist, which had been used as synonyms, while the term communism fell out of use during this period. An early distinction between communism and socialism was that the latter aimed to only socialise production while the former aimed to socialise both production and consumption (in the form of free access to final goods). By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of communism as the latter had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for socialism. It was not until after the Bolshevik Revolution that socialism was appropriated by Vladimir Lenin to mean a stage between capitalism and communism. He used it to defend the Bolshevik program from Marxist criticism that Russia's productive forces were not sufficiently developed for communism. The distinction between communism and socialism became salient in 1918 after the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, interpreting communism specifically to mean socialists who supported the politics and theories of Bolshevism, Leninism and later that of Marxism–Leninism, although communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx, "Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death". In Christian Europe, communists were believed to have adopted atheism. In Protestant England, communism was too close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence socialist was the preferred term. Engels wrote that in 1848, when The Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable in Europe while communism was not. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered respectable socialists while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists. This branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill discussed a form of economic socialism within free market. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill posited that "as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies" and promoted substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. While democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity, Marxists denounced it as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the proletariat. History The history of socialism has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution, along with the changes that brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847-48 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed scientific socialism. In the last third of the 19th century parties dedicated to Democratic socialism arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899. In the first half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union and the communist parties of the Third International around the world, came to represent socialism in terms of the Soviet model of economic development and the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production, although other trends condemned what they saw as the lack of democracy. The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, saw socialism introduced. China experienced land redistribution and the Anti-Rightist Movement, followed by the disastrous Great Leap Forward. In the UK, Herbert Morrison said that "socialism is what the Labour government does" whereas Aneurin Bevan argued socialism requires that the "main streams of economic activity are brought under public direction", with an economic plan and workers' democracy. Some argued that capitalism had been abolished. Socialist governments established the mixed economy with partial nationalisations and social welfare. By 1968, the prolonged Vietnam War gave rise to the New Left, socialists who tended to be critical of the Soviet Union and social democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists and some elements of the New Left and others favoured decentralised collective ownership in the form of cooperatives or workers' councils. In 1989, the Soviet Union saw the end of communism, marked by the Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe, culminating in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Socialists have adopted the causes of other social movements such as environmentalism, feminism and progressivism. Early 21st century In 1990, the São Paulo Forum was launched by the Workers' Party (Brazil), linking left-wing socialist parties in Latin America. Its members were associated with the Pink tide of left-wing governments on the continent in the early 21st century. Member parties ruling countries included the Front for Victory in Argentina, the PAIS Alliance in Ecuador, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador, Peru Wins in Peru, and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, whose leader Hugo Chávez initiated what he called "Socialism of the 21st century". Many mainstream democratic socialist and social democratic parties continued to drift right-wards. On the right of the socialist movement, the Progressive Alliance was founded in 2013 by current or former members of the Socialist International. The organisation states the aim of becoming the global network of "the progressive, democratic, social-democratic, socialist and labour movement". Mainstream social democratic and socialist parties are also networked in Europe in the Party of European Socialists formed in 1992. Many of these parties lost large parts of their electoral base in the early 21st century. This phenomenon is known as Pasokification from the Greek party PASOK, which saw a declining share of the vote in national elections—from 43.9% in 2009 to 13.2% in May 2012, to 12.3% in June 2012 and 4.7% in 2015—due to its poor handling of the Greek government-debt crisis and implementation of harsh austerity measures. In Europe, the share of votes for such socialist parties was at its 70-year lowest in 2015. For example, the Socialist Party, after winning the 2012 French presidential election, rapidly lost its vote share, the Social Democratic Party of Germany's fortunes declined rapidly from 2005 to 2019, and outside Europe the Israeli Labor Party fell from being the dominant force in Israeli politics to 4.43% of the vote in the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, and the Peruvian Aprista Party went from ruling party in 2011 to a minor party. The decline of these mainstream parties opened space for more radical and populist left parties in some countries, such as Spain's Podemos, Greece's Syriza (in government, 2015–19), Germany's Die Linke, and France's La France Insoumise. In other countries, left-wing revivals have taken place within mainstream democratic socialist and centrist parties, as with Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States. Few of these radical left parties have won national government in Europe, while some more mainstream socialist parties have managed to, such as Portugal's Socialist Party. Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of the American socialist magazine Jacobin, argued that the appeal of socialism persists due to the inequality and "tremendous suffering" under current global capitalism, the use of wage labor "which rests on the exploitation and domination of humans by other humans," and ecological crises, such as climate change. In contrast, Mark J. Perry of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) argued that despite socialism's resurgence, it is still "a flawed system based on completely faulty principles that aren't consistent with human behavior and can't nurture the human spirit.", adding that "While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny." Some in the scientific community have suggested that a contemporary radical response to social and ecological problems could be seen in the emergence of movements associated with degrowth, eco-socialism and eco-anarchism. Social and political theory Early socialist thought took influences from a diverse range of philosophies such as civic republicanism, Enlightenment rationalism, romanticism, forms of materialism, Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant), natural law and natural rights theory, utilitarianism and liberal political economy. Another philosophical basis for a great deal of early socialism was the emergence of positivism during the European Enlightenment. Positivism held that both the natural and social worlds could be understood through scientific knowledge and be analysed using scientific methods. The fundamental objective of socialism is to attain an advanced level of material production and therefore greater productivity, efficiency and rationality as compared to capitalism and all previous systems, under the view that an expansion of human productive capability is the basis for the extension of freedom and equality in society. Many forms of socialist theory hold that human behaviour is largely shaped by the social environment. In particular, socialism holds that social mores, values, cultural traits and economic practices are social creations and not the result of an immutable natural law. The object of their critique is thus not human avarice or human consciousness, but the material conditions and man-made social systems (i.e. the economic structure of society) which give rise to observed social problems and inefficiencies. Bertrand Russell, often considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, identified as a socialist. Russell opposed the class struggle aspects of Marxism, viewing socialism solely as an adjustment of economic relations to accommodate modern machine production to benefit all of humanity through the progressive reduction of necessary work time. Socialists view creativity as an essential aspect of human nature and define freedom as a state of being where individuals are able to express their creativity unhindered by constraints of both material scarcity and coercive social institutions. The socialist concept of individuality is intertwined with the concept of individual creative expression. Karl Marx believed that expansion of the productive forces and technology was the basis for the expansion of human freedom and that socialism, being a system that is consistent with modern developments in technology, would enable the flourishing of "free individualities" through the progressive reduction of necessary labour time. The reduction of necessary labour time to a minimum would grant individuals the opportunity to pursue the development of their true individuality and creativity. Criticism of capitalism Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products such as high-pressure advertisement to be sold at a profit, thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand. Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need and therefore a crucial criticism often made by socialists is that "making money", or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand (the production of use-values). The fundamental criterion for economic activity in capitalism is the accumulation of capital for reinvestment in production, but this spurs the development of new, non-productive industries that do not produce use-value and only exist to keep the accumulation process afloat (otherwise the system goes into crisis), such as the spread of the financial industry, contributing to the formation of economic bubbles. Such accumulation and reinvestment, when it demands a constant rate of profit, causes problems if the earnings in the rest of society do not increase in proportion. Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy. According to socialists, private property becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralised, socialised institutions based on private appropriation of revenue—but based on cooperative work and internal planning in allocation of inputs—until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant. With no need for capital accumulation and a class of owners, private property in the means of production is perceived as being an outdated form of economic organisation that should be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialised assets. Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to uncoordinated economic decisions that result in business fluctuations, unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis of overproduction. Excessive disparities in income distribution lead to social instability and require costly corrective measures in the form of redistributive taxation, which incurs heavy administrative costs while weakening the incentive to work, inviting dishonesty and increasing the likelihood of tax evasion while (the corrective measures) reduce the overall efficiency of the market economy. These corrective policies limit the incentive system of the market by providing things such as minimum wages, unemployment insurance, taxing profits and reducing the reserve army of labour, resulting in reduced incentives for capitalists to invest in more production. In essence, social welfare policies cripple capitalism and its incentive system and are thus unsustainable in the long run. Marxists argue that the establishment of a socialist mode of production is the only way to overcome these deficiencies. Socialists and specifically Marxian socialists argue that the inherent conflict of interests between the working class and capital prevent optimal use of available human resources and leads to contradictory interest groups (labour and business) striving to influence the state to intervene in the economy in their favour at the expense of overall economic efficiency. Early socialists (utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticised capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of society. In addition, they complained that capitalism does not use available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public. Marxism Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that socialism would emerge from historical necessity as capitalism rendered itself obsolete and unsustainable from increasing internal contradictions emerging from the development of the productive forces and technology. It was these advances in the productive forces combined with the old social relations of production of capitalism that would generate contradictions, leading to working-class consciousness. Marx and Engels held the view that the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the working class in the broadest Marxist sense) would be moulded by their conditions of wage slavery, leading to a tendency to seek their freedom or emancipation by overthrowing ownership of the means of production by capitalists and consequently, overthrowing the state that upheld this economic order. For Marx and Engels, conditions determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would wither away. Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably, but many later Marxists defined socialism as a specific historical phase that would displace capitalism and precede communism. The major characteristics of socialism (particularly as conceived by Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune of 1871) are that the proletariat would control the means of production through a workers' state erected by the workers in their interests. For orthodox Marxists, socialism is the lower stage of communism based on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution", while upper stage communism is based on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", the upper stage becoming possible only after the socialist stage further develops economic efficiency and the automation of production has led to a superabundance of goods and services. Marx argued that the material productive forces (in industry and commerce) brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience. Role of the state Socialists have taken different perspectives on the state and the role it should play in revolutionary struggles, in constructing socialism and within an established socialist economy. In the 19th century, the philosophy of state socialism was first explicitly expounded by the German political philosopher Ferdinand Lassalle. In contrast to Karl Marx's perspective of the state, Lassalle rejected the concept of the state as a class-based power structure whose main function was to preserve existing class structures. Lassalle also rejected the Marxist view that the state was destined to "wither away". Lassalle considered the state to be an entity independent of class allegiances and an instrument of justice that would therefore be essential for achieving socialism. Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialists including reformists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism, anarchists and libertarian socialists criticised the idea of using the state to conduct central planning and own the means of production as a way to establish socialism. Following the victory of Leninism in Russia, the idea of "state socialism" spread rapidly throughout the socialist movement and eventually state socialism came to be identified with the Soviet economic model. Joseph Schumpeter rejected the association of socialism and social ownership with state ownership over the means of production because the state as it exists in its current form is a product of capitalist society and cannot be transplanted to a different institutional framework. Schumpeter argued that there would be different institutions within socialism than those that exist within modern capitalism, just as feudalism had its own distinct and unique institutional forms. The state, along with concepts like property and taxation, were concepts exclusive to commercial society (capitalism) and attempting to place them within the context of a future socialist society would amount to a distortion of these concepts by using them out of context. Utopian versus scientific Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists. Visions of imaginary ideal societies, which competed with revolutionary social democratic movements, were viewed as not being grounded in the material conditions of society and as reactionary. Although it is technically possible for any set of ideas or any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label "utopian" by later socialists as a negative term to imply naivete and dismiss their ideas as fanciful or unrealistic. Religious sects whose members live communally such as the Hutterites are not usually called "utopian socialists", although their way of living is a prime example. They have been categorised as religious socialists by some. Similarly, modern intentional communities based on socialist ideas could also be categorised as "utopian socialist". For Marxists, the development of capitalism in Western Europe provided a material basis for the possibility of bringing about socialism because according to The Communist Manifesto "[w]hat the bourgeoisie produces above all is its own grave diggers", namely the working class, which must become conscious of the historical objectives set it by society. Reform versus revolution Revolutionary socialists believe that a social revolution is necessary to effect structural changes to the socioeconomic structure of society. Among revolutionary socialists there are differences in strategy, theory and the definition of revolution. Orthodox Marxists and left communists take an impossibilist stance, believing that revolution should be spontaneous as a result of contradictions in society due to technological changes in the productive forces. Lenin theorised that under capitalism the workers cannot achieve class consciousness beyond organising into trade unions and making demands of the capitalists. Therefore, Leninists argue that it is historically necessary for a vanguard of class conscious revolutionaries to take a central role in coordinating the social revolution to overthrow the capitalist state and eventually the institution of the state altogether. Revolution is not necessarily defined by revolutionary socialists as violent insurrection, but as a complete dismantling and rapid transformation of all areas of class society led by the majority of the masses: the working class. Reformism is generally associated with social democracy and gradualist democratic socialism. Reformism is the belief that socialists should stand in parliamentary elections within capitalist society and if elected use the machinery of government to pass political and social reforms for the purposes of ameliorating the instabilities and inequities of capitalism. Within socialism, reformism is used in two different ways. One has no intention of bringing about socialism or fundamental economic change to society and is used to oppose such structural changes. The other is based on the assumption that while reforms are not socialist in themselves, they can help rally supporters to the cause of revolution by popularizing the cause of socialism to the working class. The debate on the ability for social democratic reformism to lead to a socialist transformation of society is over a century old. Reformism is criticized for being paradoxical as it seeks to overcome the existing economic system of capitalism while trying to improve the conditions of capitalism, thereby making it appear more tolerable to society. According to Rosa Luxemburg, capitalism is not overthrown, "but is on the contrary strengthened by the development of social reforms". In a similar vein, Stan Parker of the Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that reforms are a diversion of energy for socialists and are limited because they must adhere to the logic of capitalism. French social theorist André Gorz criticized reformism by advocating a third alternative to reformism and social revolution that he called "non-reformist reforms", specifically focused on structural changes to capitalism as opposed to reforms to improve living conditions within capitalism or to prop it up through economic interventions. Culture In the Leninist conception, the role of the vanguard party was to politically educate the workers and peasants to dispel the societal false consciousness of institutional religion and nationalism that constitute the cultural status quo taught by the bourgeoisie to the proletariat to facilitate their economic exploitation of peasants and workers. Influenced by Lenin, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party stated that the development of the socialist workers' culture should not be "hamstrung from above" and opposed the Proletkult (1917–1925) organisational control of the national culture. Similarly, Trotsky viewed the party as transmitters of culture to the masses for raising the standards of education, as well as entry into the cultural sphere, but that the process of artistic creation in terms of language and presentation should be the domain of the practitioner. According to political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz in his book The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, this represented one of several distinctions between Trotsky's approach on cultural matters and Stalin's policy in the 1930s. In Literature and Revolution, Trotsky examined aesthetic issues in relation to class and the Russian revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered his work as the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later, Marxist cultural and critical theories. He would later co-author the 1938 Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art with the endorsement of prominent artists Andre Breton and Diego Rivera. Trotsky's writings on literature such as his 1923 survey which advocated tolerance, limited censorship and respect for literary tradition had strong appeal to the New York Intellectuals. Prior to Stalin's rule, literary, religious and national representatives had some level of autonomy in Soviet Russia throughout the 1920s but these groups were later rigorously repressed during the Stalinist era. Socialist realism was imposed under Stalin in artistic production and other creative industries such as music, film along with sports were subject to extreme levels of political control. The counter-cultural phenomenon which emerged in the 1960s shaped the intellectual and radical outlook of the New Left; this movement placed a heavy emphasis on anti-racism, anti-imperialism and direct democracy in opposition to the dominant culture of advanced industrial capitalism. Socialist groups have also been closely involved with a number of counter-cultural movements such as Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Love Music Hate Racism, Anti-Nazi League and Unite Against Fascism. Economics Socialist economics starts from the premise that "individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members". The original conception of socialism was an economic system whereby production was organised in a way to directly produce goods and services for their utility (or use-value in classical and Marxian economics), with the direct allocation of resources in terms of physical units as opposed to financial calculation and the economic laws of capitalism (see law of value), often entailing the end of capitalistic economic categories such as rent, interest, profit and money. In a fully developed socialist economy, production and balancing factor inputs with outputs becomes a technical process to be undertaken by engineers. Market socialism refers to an array of different economic theories and systems that use the market mechanism to organise production and to allocate factor inputs among socially owned enterprises, with the economic surplus (profits) accruing to society in a social dividend as opposed to private capital owners. Variations of market socialism include libertarian proposals such as mutualism, based on classical economics, and neoclassical economic models such as the Lange model. Some economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Mancur Olson, and others not specifically advancing anti-socialists positions have shown that prevailing economic models upon which such democratic or market socialism models might be based have logical flaws or unworkable presuppositions. These criticisms have been incorporated into the models of market socialism developed by John Roemer and Nicholas Vrousalis. The ownership of the means of production can be based on direct ownership by the users of the productive property through worker cooperative; or commonly owned by all of society with management and control delegated to those who operate/use the means of production; or public ownership by a state apparatus. Public ownership may refer to the creation of state-owned enterprises, nationalisation, municipalisation or autonomous collective institutions. Some socialists feel that in a socialist economy, at least the "commanding heights" of the economy must be publicly owned. Economic liberals and right libertarians view private ownership of the means of production and the market exchange as natural entities or moral rights which are central to their conceptions of freedom and liberty and view the economic dynamics of capitalism as immutable and absolute, therefore they perceive public ownership of the means of production, cooperatives and economic planning as infringements upon liberty. Management and control over the activities of enterprises are based on self-management and self-governance, with equal power-relations in the workplace to maximise occupational autonomy. A socialist form of organisation would eliminate controlling hierarchies so that only a hierarchy based on technical knowledge in the workplace remains. Every member would have decision-making power in the firm and would be able to participate in establishing its overall policy objectives. The policies/goals would be carried out by the technical specialists that form the coordinating hierarchy of the firm, who would establish plans or directives for the work community to accomplish these goals. The role and use of money in a hypothetical socialist economy is a contested issue. Nineteenth century socialists including Karl Marx, Robert Owen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill advocated various forms of labour vouchers or labour credits, which like money would be used to acquire articles of consumption, but unlike money they are unable to become capital and would not be used to allocate resources within the production process. Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky argued that money could not be arbitrarily abolished following a socialist revolution. Money had to exhaust its "historic mission", meaning it would have to be used until its function became redundant, eventually being transformed into bookkeeping receipts for statisticians and only in the more distant future would money not be required for even that role. Planned economy A planned economy is a type of economy consisting of a mixture of public ownership of the means of production and the coordination of production and distribution through economic planning. A planned economy can be either decentralised or centralised. Enrico Barone provided a comprehensive theoretical framework for a planned socialist economy. In his model, assuming perfect computation techniques, simultaneous equations relating inputs and outputs to ratios of equivalence would provide appropriate valuations to balance supply and demand. The most prominent example of a planned economy was the economic system of the Soviet Union and as such the centralised-planned economic model is usually associated with the communist states of the 20th century, where it was combined with a single-party political system. In a centrally planned economy, decisions regarding the quantity of goods and services to be produced are planned in advance by a planning agency (see also the analysis of Soviet-type economic planning). The economic systems of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are further classified as "command economies", which are defined as systems where economic coordination is undertaken by commands, directives and production targets. Studies by economists of various political persuasions on the actual functioning of the Soviet economy indicate that it was not actually a planned economy. Instead of conscious planning, the Soviet economy was based on a process whereby the plan was modified by localised agents and the original plans went largely unfulfilled. Planning agencies, ministries and enterprises all adapted and bargained with each other during the formulation of the plan as opposed to following a plan passed down from a higher authority, leading some economists to suggest that planning did not actually take place within the Soviet economy and that a better description would be an "administered" or "managed" economy. Although central planning was largely supported by Marxist–Leninists, some factions within the Soviet Union before the rise of Stalinism held positions contrary to central planning. Leon Trotsky rejected central planning in favour of decentralised planning. He argued that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, would be unable to coordinate effectively all economic activity within an economy because they operated without the input and tacit knowledge embodied by the participation of the millions of people in the economy. As a result, central planners would be unable to respond to local economic conditions. State socialism is unfeasible in this view because information cannot be aggregated by a central body and effectively used to formulate a plan for an entire economy, because doing so would result in distorted or absent price signals. Self-managed economy A self-managed, decentralised economy is based on autonomous self-regulating economic units and a decentralised mechanism of resource allocation and decision-making. This model has found support in notable classical and neoclassical economists including Alfred Marshall, John Stuart Mill and Jaroslav Vanek. There are numerous variations of self-management, including labour-managed firms and worker-managed firms. The goals of self-management are to eliminate exploitation and reduce alienation. Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers' control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds "in an implied contractual relationship with the public". It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was strongly associated with G. D. H. Cole and influenced by the ideas of William Morris. One such system is the cooperative economy, a largely free market economy in which workers manage the firms and democratically determine remuneration levels and labour divisions. Productive resources would be legally owned by the cooperative and rented to the workers, who would enjoy usufruct rights. Another form of decentralised planning is the use of cybernetics, or the use of computers to manage the allocation of economic inputs. The socialist-run government of Salvador Allende in Chile experimented with Project Cybersyn, a real-time information bridge between the government, state enterprises and consumers. This had been preceded by similar efforts to introduce a form of cybernetic economic planning as seen with the proposed OGAS system in the Soviet Union. The OGAS project was conceived to oversee a nationwide information network but was never implemented due to conflicting, bureaucratic interests. Another, more recent variant is participatory economics, wherein the economy is planned by decentralised councils of workers and consumers. Workers would be remunerated solely according to effort and sacrifice, so that those engaged in dangerous, uncomfortable and strenuous work would receive the highest incomes and could thereby work less. A contemporary model for a self-managed, non-market socialism is Pat Devine's model of negotiated coordination. Negotiated coordination is based upon social ownership by those affected by the use of the assets involved, with decisions made by those at the most localised level of production. Michel Bauwens identifies the emergence of the open software movement and peer-to-peer production as a new alternative mode of production to the capitalist economy and centrally planned economy that is based on collaborative self-management, common ownership of resources and the production of use-values through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital. Anarcho-communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property and capitalism in favour of common ownership of the means of production. Anarcho-syndicalism was practised in Catalonia and other places in the Spanish Revolution during the Spanish Civil War. Sam Dolgoff estimated that about eight million people participated directly or at least indirectly in the Spanish Revolution. The economy of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia established a system based on market-based allocation, social ownership of the means of production and self-management within firms. This system substituted Yugoslavia's Soviet-type central planning with a decentralised, self-managed system after reforms in 1953. The Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff argues that "re-organising production so that workers become collectively self-directed at their work-sites" not only moves society beyond both capitalism and state socialism of the last century, but would also mark another milestone in human history, similar to earlier transitions out of slavery and feudalism. As an example, Wolff claims that Mondragon is "a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organisation of production". State-directed economy State socialism can be used to classify any variety of socialist philosophies that advocates the ownership of the means of production by the state apparatus, either as a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, or as an end-goal in itself. Typically, it refers to a form of technocratic management, whereby technical specialists administer or manage economic enterprises on behalf of society and the public interest instead of workers' councils or workplace democracy. A state-directed economy may refer to a type of mixed economy consisting of public ownership over large industries, as promoted by various Social democratic political parties during the 20th century. This ideology influenced the policies of the British Labour Party during Clement Attlee's administration. In the biography of the 1945 United Kingdom Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Francis Beckett states: "[T]he government ... wanted what would become known as a mixed economy." Nationalisation in the United Kingdom was achieved through compulsory purchase of the industry (i.e. with compensation). British Aerospace was a combination of major aircraft companies British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley and others. British Shipbuilders was a combination of the major shipbuilding companies including Cammell Laird, Govan Shipbuilders, Swan Hunter and Yarrow Shipbuilders, whereas the nationalisation of the coal mines in 1947 created a coal board charged with running the coal industry commercially so as to be able to meet the interest payable on the bonds which the former mine owners' shares had been converted into. Market socialism Market socialism consists of publicly owned or cooperatively owned enterprises operating in a market economy. It is a system that uses the market and monetary prices for the allocation and accounting of the means of production, thereby retaining the process of capital accumulation. The profit generated would be used to directly remunerate employees, collectively sustain the enterprise or finance public institutions. In state-oriented forms of market socialism, in which state enterprises attempt to maximise profit, the profits can be used to fund government programs and services through a social dividend, eliminating or greatly diminishing the need for various forms of taxation that exist in capitalist systems. Neoclassical economist Léon Walras believed that a socialist economy based on state ownership of land and natural resources would provide a means of public finance to make income taxes unnecessary. Yugoslavia implemented a market socialist economy based on cooperatives and worker self-management. Some of the economic reforms introduced during the Prague Spring by Alexander Dubček, the leader of Czechoslovakia, included elements of market socialism. Mutualism is an economic theory and anarchist school of thought that advocates a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labour in the free market. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration. Mutualism is based on a labour theory of value that holds that when labour or its product is sold, in exchange it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labour necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility". The current economic system in China is formally referred to as a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. It combines a large state sector that comprises the commanding heights of the economy, which are guaranteed their public ownership status by law, with a private sector mainly engaged in commodity production and light industry responsible from anywhere between 33% to over 70% of GDP generated in 2005. Although there has been a rapid expansion of private-sector activity since the 1980s, privatisation of state assets was virtually halted and were partially reversed in 2005. The current Chinese economy consists of 150 corporatised state-owned enterprises that report directly to China's central government. By 2008, these state-owned corporations had become increasingly dynamic and generated large increases in revenue for the state, resulting in a state-sector led recovery during the 2009 financial crises while accounting for most of China's economic growth. The Chinese economic model is widely cited as a contemporary form of state capitalism, the major difference between Western capitalism and the Chinese model being the degree of state-ownership of shares in publicly listed corporations. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has adopted a similar model after the Doi Moi economic renovation but slightly differs from the Chinese model in that the Vietnamese government retains firm control over the state sector and strategic industries, but allows for private-sector activity in commodity production. Politics While major socialist political movements include anarchism, communism, the labour movement, Marxism, social democracy, and syndicalism, independent socialist theorists, utopian socialist authors, and academic supporters of socialism may not be represented in these movements. Some political groups have called themselves socialist while holding views that some consider antithetical to socialism. Socialist has been used by members of the political right as an epithet, including against individuals who do not consider themselves to be socialists and against policies that are not considered socialist by their proponents. While there are many variations of socialism, and there is no single definition encapsulating all of socialism, there have been common elements identified by scholars. In his Dictionary of Socialism (1924), Angelo S. Rappoport analysed forty definitions of socialism to conclude that common elements of socialism include general criticism of the social effects of private ownership and control of capital—as being the cause of poverty, low wages, unemployment, economic and social inequality and a lack of economic security; a general view that the solution to these problems is a form of collective control over the means of production, distribution and exchange (the degree and means of control vary among socialist movements); an agreement that the outcome of this collective control should be a society based upon social justice, including social equality, economic protection of people and should provide a more satisfying life for most people. In The Concepts of Socialism (1975), Bhikhu Parekh identifies four core principles of socialism and particularly socialist society, namely sociality, social responsibility, cooperation and planning. In his study Ideologies and Political Theory (1996), Michael Freeden states that all socialists share five themes: the first is that socialism posits that society is more than a mere collection of individuals; second, that it considers human welfare a desirable objective; third, that it considers humans by nature to be active and productive; fourth, it holds the belief of human equality; and fifth, that history is progressive and will create positive change on the condition that humans work to achieve such change. Anarchism Anarchism advocates stateless societies often defined as self-governed voluntary institutions, but that several authors have defined as more specific institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations. While anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary or harmful, it is not the central aspect. Anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of human relations, including the state system. Mutualists support market socialism, collectivist anarchists favour workers cooperatives and salaries based on the amount of time contributed to production, anarcho-communists advocate a direct transition from capitalism to libertarian communism and a gift economy and anarcho-syndicalists prefer workers' direct action and the general strike. The authoritarian–libertarian struggles and disputes within the socialist movement go back to the First International and the expulsion in 1872 of the anarchists, who went on to lead the Anti-authoritarian International and then founded their own libertarian international, the Anarchist St. Imier International. In 1888, the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker, who proclaimed himself to be an anarchistic socialist and libertarian socialist in opposition to the authoritarian state socialism and the compulsory communism, included the full text of a "Socialistic Letter" by Ernest Lesigne in his essay on "State Socialism and Anarchism". According to Lesigne, there are two types of socialism: "One is dictatorial, the other libertarian". Tucker's two socialisms were the authoritarian state socialism which he associated to the Marxist school and the libertarian anarchist socialism, or simply anarchism, that he advocated. Tucker noted that the fact that the authoritarian "State Socialism has overshadowed other forms of Socialism gives it no right to a monopoly of the Socialistic idea". According to Tucker, what those two schools of socialism had in common was the labor theory of value and the ends, by which anarchism pursued different means. According to anarchists such as the authors of An Anarchist FAQ, anarchism is one of the many traditions of socialism. For anarchists and other anti-authoritarian socialists, socialism "can only mean a classless and anti-authoritarian (i.e. libertarian) society in which people manage their own affairs, either as individuals or as part of a group (depending on the situation). In other words, it implies self-management in all aspects of life", including at the workplace. Michael Newman includes anarchism as one of many socialist traditions. Peter Marshall argues that "[i]n general anarchism is closer to socialism than liberalism. ... Anarchism finds itself largely in the socialist camp, but it also has outriders in liberalism. It cannot be reduced to socialism, and is best seen as a separate and distinctive doctrine." Democratic socialism and social democracy Democratic socialism represents any socialist movement that seeks to establish an economy based on economic democracy by and for the working class. Democratic socialism is difficult to define and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some definitions simply refer to all forms of socialism that follow an electoral, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one. According to Christopher Pierson, "[i]f the contrast which 1989 highlights is not that between socialism in the East and liberal democracy in the West, the latter must be recognised to have been shaped, reformed and compromised by a century of social democratic pressure". Pierson further claims that "social democratic and socialist parties within the constitutional arena in the West have almost always been involved in a politics of compromise with existing capitalist institutions (to whatever far distant prize its eyes might from time to time have been lifted)". For Pierson, "if advocates of the death of socialism accept that social democrats belong within the socialist camp, as I think they must, then the contrast between socialism (in all its variants) and liberal democracy must collapse. For actually existing liberal democracy is, in substantial part, a product of socialist (social democratic) forces". Social democracy is a socialist tradition of political thought. Many social democrats refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists and some such as Tony Blair employ these terms interchangeably. Others found "clear differences" between the three terms and prefer to describe their own political beliefs by using the term social democracy. The two main directions were to establish democratic socialism or to build first a welfare state within the capitalist system. The first variant advances democratic socialism through reformist and gradualist methods. In the second variant, social democracy is a policy regime involving a welfare state, collective bargaining schemes, support for publicly financed public services and a mixed economy. It is often used in this manner to refer to Western and Northern Europe during the later half of the 20th century. It was described by Jerry Mander as "hybrid economics", an active collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions. Some studies and surveys indicate that people tend to live happier and healthier lives in social democratic societies rather than neoliberal ones. Social democrats advocate a peaceful, evolutionary transition of the economy to socialism through progressive social reform. It asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law. It promotes extending democratic decision-making beyond political democracy to include economic democracy to guarantee employees and other economic stakeholders sufficient rights of co-determination. It supports a mixed economy that opposes inequality, poverty and oppression while rejecting both a totally unregulated market economy or a fully planned economy. Common social democratic policies include universal social rights and universally accessible public services such as education, health care, workers' compensation and other services, including child care and elder care. Social democracy supports the trade union labour movement and supports collective bargaining rights for workers. Most social democratic parties are affiliated with the Socialist International. Modern democratic socialism is a broad political movement that seeks to promote the ideals of socialism within the context of a democratic system. Some democratic socialists support social democracy as a temporary measure to reform the current system while others reject reformism in favour of more revolutionary methods. Modern social democracy emphasises a program of gradual legislative modification of capitalism to make it more equitable and humane while the theoretical end goal of building a socialist society is relegated to the indefinite future. According to Sheri Berman, Marxism is loosely held to be valuable for its emphasis on changing the world for a more just, better future. The two movements are widely similar both in terminology and in ideology, although there are a few key differences. The major difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is the object of their politics in that contemporary social democrats support a welfare state and unemployment insurance as well as other practical, progressive reforms of capitalism and are more concerned to administrate and humanise it. On the other hand, democratic socialists seek to replace capitalism with a socialist economic system, arguing that any attempt to humanise capitalism through regulations and welfare policies would distort the market and create economic contradictions. Ethical and liberal socialism Ethical socialism appeals to socialism on ethical and moral grounds as opposed to economic, egoistic, and consumeristic grounds. It emphasizes the need for a morally conscious economy based upon the principles of altruism, cooperation, and social justice while opposing possessive individualism. Ethical socialism has been the official philosophy of mainstream socialist parties. Liberal socialism incorporates liberal principles to socialism. It has been compared to post-war social democracy for its support of a mixed economy that includes both public and private capital goods. While democratic socialism and social democracy are anti-capitalist positions insofar as criticism of capitalism is linked to the private ownership of the means of production, liberal socialism identifies artificial and legalistic monopolies to be the fault of capitalism and opposes an entirely unregulated market economy. It considers both liberty and social equality to be compatible and mutually dependent. Principles that can be described as ethical or liberal socialist have been based upon or developed by philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, Eduard Bernstein, John Dewey, Carlo Rosselli, Norberto Bobbio, and Chantal Mouffe. Other important liberal socialist figures include Guido Calogero, Piero Gobetti, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, John Maynard Keynes and R. H. Tawney. Liberal socialism has been particularly prominent in British and Italian politics. Leninism and precedents Blanquism is a conception of revolution named for Louis Auguste Blanqui. It holds that socialist revolution should be carried out by a relatively small group of highly organised and secretive conspirators. Upon seizing power, the revolutionaries introduce socialism. Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein criticised Lenin, stating that his conception of revolution was elitist and Blanquist. Marxism–Leninism combines Marx's scientific socialist concepts and Lenin's anti-imperialism, democratic centralism, vanguardism and the principle of "He who does not work, neither shall he eat". Hal Draper defined socialism from above as the philosophy which employs an elite administration to run the socialist state. The other side of socialism is a more democratic socialism from below. The idea of socialism from above is much more frequently discussed in elite circles than socialism from below—even if that is the Marxist ideal—because it is more practical. Draper viewed socialism from below as being the purer, more Marxist version of socialism. According to Draper, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were devoutly opposed to any socialist institution that was "conducive to superstitious authoritarianism". Draper makes the argument that this division echoes the division between "reformist or revolutionary, peaceful or violent, democratic or authoritarian, etc." and further identifies six major varieties of socialism from above, among them "Philanthropism", "Elitism", "Pannism", "Communism", "Permeationism" and "Socialism-from-Outside". According to Arthur Lipow, Marx and Engels were "the founders of modern revolutionary democratic socialism", described as a form of "socialism from below" that is "based on a mass working-class movement, fighting from below for the extension of democracy and human freedom". This type of socialism is contrasted to that of the "authoritarian, anti-democratic creed" and "the various totalitarian collectivist ideologies which claim the title of socialism" as well as "the many varieties of 'socialism from above' which have led in the twentieth century to movements and state forms in which a despotic 'new class' rules over a stratified economy in the name of socialism", a division that "runs through the history of the socialist movement". Lipow identifies Bellamyism and Stalinism as two prominent authoritarian socialist currents within the history of the socialist movement. Trotsky viewed himself to be an adherent of Leninism but opposed the bureaucratic and authoritarian methods of Stalin. A number of scholars and Western socialists have regarded Leon Trotsky as a democratic alternative rather than a forerunner to Stalin with particular emphasis drawn to his activities in the pre-Civil War period and as leader of the Left Opposition. More specifically, Trotsky advocated for a decentralised form of economic planning, mass soviet democratization,worker's control of production, elected representation of Soviet socialist parties, the tactic of a united front against far-right parties, cultural autonomy for artistic movements, voluntary collectivisation, a transitional program, and socialist internationalism. Several scholars state that in practice, the Soviet model functioned as a form of state capitalism. Libertarian socialism Libertarian socialism, sometimes called left-libertarianism, social anarchism and socialist libertarianism, is an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarian tradition within socialism that rejects centralised state ownership and control including criticism of wage labour relationships (wage slavery) as well as the state itself. It emphasises workers' self-management and decentralised structures of political organisation. Libertarian socialism asserts that a society based on freedom and equality can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control production. Libertarian socialists generally prefer direct democracy and federal or confederal associations such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions and workers' councils. Anarcho-syndicalist Gaston Leval explained: All of this is typically done within a general call for libertarian and voluntary free associations through the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life. As part of the larger socialist movement, it seeks to distinguish itself from Bolshevism, Leninism and Marxism–Leninism as well as social democracy. Past and present political philosophies and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, collectivist anarchism, individualist anarchism and mutualism), autonomism, Communalism, participism, libertarian Marxism (council communism and Luxemburgism), revolutionary syndicalism and utopian socialism (Fourierism). Religious socialism Christian socialism is a broad concept involving an intertwining of Christian religion with socialism. Islamic socialism is a more spiritual form of socialism. Muslim socialists believe that the teachings of the Quran and Muhammad are not only compatible with, but actively promoting the principles of equality and public ownership, drawing inspiration from the early Medina welfare state he established. Muslim socialists are more conservative than their Western contemporaries and find their roots in anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and sometimes, if in an Arab speaking country, Arab nationalism. Islamic socialists believe in deriving legitimacy from political mandate as opposed to religious texts. Social movements Socialist feminism is a branch of feminism that argues that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both economic and cultural sources of women's oppression. Marxist feminism's foundation was laid by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884). August Bebel's Woman under Socialism (1879), is the "single work dealing with sexuality most widely read by rank-and-file members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)". In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx were against the demonisation of men and supported a proletariat revolution that would overcome as many male-female inequalities as possible. As their movement already had the most radical demands in women's equality, most Marxist leaders, including Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai, counterposed Marxism against liberal feminism rather than trying to combine them. Anarcha-feminism began with late 19th- and early 20th-century authors and theorists such as anarchist feminists Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre. In the Spanish Civil War, an anarcha-feminist group, ("Free Women") linked to the , organised to defend both anarchist and feminist ideas. In 1972, the Chicago Women's Liberation Union published "Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women's Movement", which is believed to be the first published use of the term "socialist feminism". Many socialists were early advocates of LGBT rights. For early socialist Charles Fourier, true freedom could only occur without suppressing passions, as the suppression of passions is not only destructive to the individual, but to society as a whole. Writing before the advent of the term "homosexuality", Fourier recognised that both men and women have a wide range of sexual needs and preferences which may change throughout their lives, including same-sex sexuality and androgénité. He argued that all sexual expressions should be enjoyed as long as people are not abused and that "affirming one's difference" can actually enhance social integration. In Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism, he advocates an egalitarian society where wealth is shared by all, while warning of the dangers of social systems that crush individuality. Edward Carpenter actively campaigned for homosexual rights. His work The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women was a 1908 book arguing for gay liberation. who was an influential personality in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. After the Russian Revolution under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the Soviet Union abolished previous laws against homosexuality. Harry Hay was an early leader in the American LGBT rights movement as well as a member of the Communist Party USA. He is known for his involvement in the founding of gay organisations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States which in its early days reflected a strong Marxist influence. The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality reports that "[a]s Marxists the founders of the group believed that the injustice and oppression which they suffered stemmed from relationships deeply embedded in the structure of American society". Emerging from events such as the May 1968 insurrection in France, the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US and the Stonewall riots of 1969, militant gay liberation organisations began to spring up around the world. Many sprang from left radicalism more than established homophile groups, although the Gay Liberation Front took an anti-capitalist stance and attacked the nuclear family and traditional gender roles. Eco-socialism is a political strain merging aspects of socialism, Marxism or libertarian socialism with green politics, ecology and alter-globalisation. Eco-socialists generally claim that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalisation and imperialism under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures. Contrary to the depiction of Karl Marx by some environmentalists, social ecologists and fellow socialists as a productivist who favoured the domination of nature, eco-socialists revisited Marx's writings and believe that he "was a main originator of the ecological world-view". Marx discussed a "metabolic rift" between man and nature, stating that "private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another" and his observation that a society must "hand it [the planet] down to succeeding generations in an improved condition". English socialist William Morris is credited with developing principles of what was later called eco-socialism. During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his ideas within the Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League. Green anarchism blends anarchism with environmental issues. An important early influence was Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden as well as Élisée Reclus. In the late 19th century, anarcho-naturism fused anarchism and naturist philosophies within individualist anarchist circles in France, Spain, Cuba and Portugal. Murray Bookchin's first book Our Synthetic Environment was followed by his essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" which introduced ecology as a concept in radical politics. In the 1970s, Barry Commoner, claimed that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation as opposed to population pressures. In the 1990s socialist/feminists Mary Mellor and Ariel Salleh adopt an eco-socialist paradigm. An "environmentalism of the poor" combining ecological awareness and social justice has also become prominent. Pepper critiqued the current approach of many within green politics, particularly deep ecologists. Syndicalism Syndicalism operates through industrial trade unions. It rejects state socialism and the use of establishment politics. Syndicalists reject state power in favour of strategies such as the general strike. Syndicalists advocate a socialist economy based on federated unions or syndicates of workers who own and manage the means of production. Some Marxist currents advocate syndicalism, such as De Leonism. Anarcho-syndicalism views syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy. The Spanish Revolution was largely orchestrated by the anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT. The International Workers' Association is an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist labour unions and initiatives. Public views A multitude of polls have found significant levels of support for socialism among modern populations. A 2018 IPSOS poll found that 50% of the respondents globally strongly or somewhat agreed that present socialist values were of great value for societal progress. In China this was 84%, India 72%, Malaysia 62%, Turkey 62%, South Africa 57%, Brazil 57%, Russia 55%, Spain 54%, Argentina 52%, Mexico 51%, Saudi Arabia 51%, Sweden 49%, Canada 49%, Great Britain 49%, Australia 49%, Poland 48%, Chile 48%, South Korea 48%, Peru 48%, Italy 47%, Serbia 47%, Germany 45%, Belgium 44%, Romania 40%, United States 39%, France 31%, Hungary 28% and Japan 21%. A 2021 survey conducted by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) found that 67% of young British (16–24) respondents wanted to live in a socialist economic system, 72% supported the re-nationalisation of various industries such as energy, water along with railways and 75% agreed with the view that climate change was a specifically capitalist problem. A 2023 IPSOS poll found that a majority of British public favoured public ownership of utilities including water, rail and electricity. Specifically, 68% of respondents favoured the nationalisation of water services, 65% supporting the nationalisation of the railways, 63% supporting the public ownership of power networks and 39% favouring broadband access which is operated by the government. The poll also found broad levels of support among traditional Labour and Conservative voters. The results of a 2019 Axios poll found that 70% of US millennials were willing to vote for a socialist candidate and 50% of this same demographic had a somewhat or very unfavourable view of capitalism. Subsequently, another 2021 Axios poll found that 51% of 18-34 US adults had a positive view of socialism. Yet, 41% of Americans more generally had a positive view of socialism compared to 52% of those who viewing socialism more negatively. In 2023, the Fraser Institute published findings which found that 42% of Canadians viewed socialism as the ideal system compared to 43% of British respondents, 40% Australian respondents and 31% American respondents. Overall support for socialism ranged from 50% of Canadians 18-24 year olds to 28% of Canadians over 55. Criticism According to analytical Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright, "The Right condemned socialism as violating individual rights to private property and unleashing monstrous forms of state oppression", while "the Left saw it as opening up new vistas of social equality, genuine freedom and the development of human potentials." Because of socialism's many varieties, most critiques have focused on a specific approach. Proponents of one approach typically criticise others. Socialism has been criticised in terms of its models of economic organization as well as its political and social implications. Other critiques are directed at the socialist movement, parties, or existing states. Some forms of criticism occupy theoretical grounds, such as in the economic calculation problem presented by proponents of the Austrian School as part of the socialist calculation debate, while others support their criticism by examining historical attempts to establish socialist societies. The economic calculation problem concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a planned socialist system. Central planning is also criticized by elements of the radical left. Libertarian socialist economist Robin Hahnel notes that even if central planning overcame its inherent inhibitions of incentives and innovation, it would nevertheless be unable to maximize economic democracy and self-management, which he believes are concepts that are more intellectually coherent, consistent and just than mainstream notions of economic freedom. Economic liberals and right-libertarians argue that private ownership of the means of production and market exchange are natural entities or moral rights which are central to freedom and liberty and argue that the economic dynamics of capitalism are immutable and absolute. As such, they also argue that public ownership of the means of production and economic planning are infringements upon liberty. Critics of socialism have argued that in any society where everyone holds equal wealth, there can be no material incentive to work because one does not receive rewards for a work well done. They further argue that incentives increase productivity for all people and that the loss of those effects would lead to stagnation. Some critics of socialism argue that income sharing reduces individual incentives to work and therefore incomes should be individualized as much as possible. Some philosophers have also criticized the aims of socialism, arguing that equality erodes away at individual diversities and that the establishment of an equal society would have to entail strong coercion. Milton Friedman argued that the absence of private economic activity would enable political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers, powers that, under a capitalist system, would instead be granted by a capitalist class, which Friedman found preferable. Many commentators on the political right point to the mass killings under communist regimes, claiming them as an indictment of socialism. Opponents of this view, including supporters of socialism, state that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by socialism itself, and draw comparisons to killings, famines and excess deaths under capitalism, colonialism and anti-communist authoritarian governments. See also Anarchism and socialism Critique of work List of socialist parties with national parliamentary representation List of socialist economists List of communist ideologies List of socialist songs List of socialist states Paris Commune Socialist democracy Scientific socialism Socialism by country (category) Spanish Revolution of 1936 Marxian critique of political economy Types of socialism Zenitism References Bibliography Further reading Marx & Engels, Selected works in one volume, Lawrence and Wishart (1968) . Bertell Ollman, ed., Market Socialism: The Debate among Socialists, Routledge, 1998. . Leo Panitch, Renewing Socialism: Democracy, Strategy, and Imagination. . Emile Perreau-Saussine, What remains of socialism?, in Patrick Riordan (dir.), Values in Public life: aspects of common goods (Berlin, LIT Verlag, 2007), pp. 11–34. External links Socialism – entry at the Encyclopædia Britannica Cuban Socialism from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives. Anti-capitalism Anti-fascism Economic ideologies Economic systems Political movements

Monism and dualism in international law

The terms monism and dualism are used to describe two different theories of the relationship between international law and domestic law. Monism and dualism both offer approaches to how international law comes into effect within states, and how conflicts between national and international law are resolved. In practice, many states are partly monist and partly dualist in their actual application of international law in their national systems. Monism Monists accept that the internal and international legal systems form a unity. Both national legal rules and international rules that a state has accepted, for example by way of a treaty, determine whether actions are legal or illegal. In most so-called "monist" states, a distinction between international law in the form of treaties, and other international law, e.g., customary international law or jus cogens, is made; such states may thus be partly monist and partly dualist. In a pure monist state, international law does not need to be translated into national law. It is simply incorporated and has effect automatically in national or domestic laws. The act of ratifying an international treaty immediately incorporates the law into national law; and customary international law is treated as part of national law as well. International law can be directly applied by a national judge, and can be directly invoked by citizens, just as if it were national law. A judge can declare a national rule invalid if it contradicts international rules because, in some states, international rules have priority. In other states, like in Germany, treaties have the same effect as legislation, and by the principle of Lex posterior derogat priori ("Later law removes the earlier"), only take precedence over national legislation enacted prior to their ratification. In its most pure form, monism dictates that national law that contradicts international law is null and void, even if it post-dates international law, and even if it is constitutional in nature. From a human rights point of view, for example, this has some advantages. For example, a country has accepted a human rights treaty, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but some of its national laws limit the freedom of the press. A citizen of that country, who is being prosecuted by his state for violating this national law, can invoke the human rights treaty in a national courtroom and can ask the judge to apply this treaty and to decide that the national law is invalid. They do not have to wait for national law that translates international law. "So when someone in The Netherlands feels his human rights are being violated he can go to a Dutch judge and the judge must apply the law of the Convention. He must apply international law even if it is not in conformity with Dutch law". Dualism Dualists emphasize the difference between national and international law, and require the transposition of the latter into the former. Without this translation, international law does not exist as law. International law has to be national law as well, or it is no law at all. If a state accepts a treaty but does not adapt its national law in order to conform to the treaty or does not create a national law explicitly incorporating the treaty, then it violates international law. But one cannot claim that the treaty has become part of national law. Citizens cannot rely on it and judges cannot apply it. National laws that contradict it remain in force. According to dualists, national judges never apply international law, only international law that has been translated into national law. "International law as such can confer no right cognizable in the municipal courts. It is only insofar as the rules of international law are recognized as included in the rules of municipal law that they are allowed in municipal courts to give rise to rights and obligations". The supremacy of international law is a rule in dualist systems as it is in monist systems. Sir Hersch Lauterpacht pointed out the International Court's determination to discourage the evasion of international obligations, and its repeated affirmation of: If international law is not directly applicable, as is the case in dualist systems, then it must be translated into national law, and existing national law that contradicts international law must be "translated away". It must be modified or eliminated in order to conform to international law. Again, from a human rights point of view, if a human rights treaty is accepted for purely political reasons, and states do not intend to fully translate it into national law or to take a monist view on international law, then the implementation of the treaty is very uncertain. The problem of "lex posterior" In dualist systems, international law must be translated into national law, and existing national law that contradicts international law must be "translated away". It must be modified or eliminated in order to conform to international law. However, the need for translation in dualist system causes a problem with regard to national laws voted after the act of translation. In a monist system, a national law that is voted after an international law has been accepted and that contradicts the international law, becomes automatically null and void at the moment it is voted. The international rule continues to prevail. In a dualist system, however, the original international law has been translated into national law – if all went well – but this national law can then be overridden by another national law on the principle of "lex posterior derogat legi priori", the later law replaces the earlier one. This means that the country – willingly or unwillingly – violates international law. A dualist system requires continuous screening of all subsequent national law for possible incompatibility with earlier international law. Examples In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, the dualist view is predominant. International law is only part of British national law once it is accepted in national law. A treaty "has no effect in municipal law until an Act of Parliament is passed to give effect to it." In other countries this distinction tends to be blurred. In the vast majority of democratic countries outside the Commonwealth, the legislature, or part of the legislature, participates in the process of ratification, so that ratification becomes a legislative act, and the treaty becomes effective in international law and in municipal law simultaneously. For instance, the Constitution of the United States provides that the President "shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur" (Article II (2)). Treaties ratified in accordance with the Constitution automatically become part of the municipal law of the United States. The United States has a "mixed" monist-dualist system; international law applies directly in US courts in some instances but not others. The Constitution's Supremacy Clause states that treaties are part of the supreme law of the land, as suggested by the quote above; however, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Medellín v. Texas (2008), held that some treaties are not "self-executing." Such treaties must be implemented by statute before their provisions may be given effect by national and sub-national courts. Similarly with regard to customary international law, the Supreme Court stated, in the case of The Pacquete Habana (1900), that "international law is part of our law". However, it also said that international law would not be applied if there is a controlling legislative, executive, or judicial act to the contrary. A matter of national legal tradition International law does not determine which point of view is to be preferred, monism or dualism. Every state decides for itself, according to its legal traditions. International law only requires that its rules are respected, and states are free to decide on the manner in which they want to respect these rules and make them binding on its citizens and agencies. "[T]he transformation of international norms into domestic law is not necessary from the point of view of international law…the necessity of transformation is a question of national, not of international law". Both a monist state and a dualist state can comply with international law. All one can say is that a monist state is less at risk of violating international rules, because its judges can apply international law directly. Negligence or unwillingness to implement international law in national law can only pose a problem in dualist states. States are free to choose the way in which they want to respect international law, but they are always accountable if they fail to adapt their national legal system in a way that they can respect international law. Either they adopt a constitution that implements a monist system so that international law can be applied directly and without transformation, or they do not. But then they have to translate all international law in national law. In a monist state we rely only on the judges and not on the legislators, but judges can also make mistakes. If a judge in a monist state makes mistakes when applying international law, then the country violates international law just as much as a dualist country that, for one reason or another, does not allow its judges to apply international law directly and fails to translate or fails to translate correctly and effectively. One reason for preferring dualism is precisely the fear that national judges are not familiar with international law – a highly complex field of law – and hence are liable to make mistakes. See also Non-refoulement — Refugee law — Political asylum International customary law Schubert Jurisprudence Legal pluralism List of national legal systems Rule according to higher law References International law Theories of law Dichotomies

Democratization

Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. Whether and to what extent democratization occurs can be influenced by various factors, including economic development, historical legacies, civil society, and international processes. Some accounts of democratization emphasize how elites drove democratization, whereas other accounts emphasize grassroots bottom-up processes. How democratization occurs has also been used to explain other political phenomena, such as whether a country goes to a war or whether its economy grows. The opposite process is known as democratic backsliding or autocratization. Description Theories of democratization seek to explain a large macro-level change of a political regime from authoritarianism to democracy. Symptoms of democratization include reform of the electoral system, increased suffrage and reduced political apathy. Measures of democratization Democracy indices enable the quantitative assessment of democratization. Some common democracy indices are Freedom House, Polity data series, V-Dem Democracy indices and Democracy Index. Democracy indices can be quantitative or categorical. Some disagreements among scholars concern the concept of democracy and how to measure democracy – and what democracy indices should be used. Waves of democratization One way to summarize the outcome theories of democratization seek to account is with the idea of waves of democratization A wave of democratization refers to a major surge of democracy in history. And Samuel P. Huntington identified three waves of democratization that have taken place in history. The first one brought democracy to Western Europe and Northern America in the 19th century. It was followed by a rise of dictatorships during the Interwar period. The second wave began after World War II, but lost steam between 1962 and the mid-1970s. The latest wave began in 1974 and is still ongoing. Democratization of Latin America and the former Eastern Bloc is part of this third wave. Waves of democratization can be followed by waves of de-democratization. Thus, Huntington, in 1991, offered the following depiction. • First wave of democratization, 1828–1926 • First wave of de-democratization, 1922–42 • Second wave of democratization, 1943–62 • Second wave of de-democratization, 1958–75 • Third wave of democratization, 1974– The idea of waves of democratization has also been used and scrutinized by many other authors, including Renske Doorenspleet, John Markoff, Seva Gunitsky, and Svend-Erik Skaaning. According to Seva Gunitsky, from the 18th century to the Arab Spring (2011–2012), 13 democratic waves can be identified. The V-Dem Democracy Report identified for the year 2023 9 cases of stand-alone democratization in East Timor, The Gambia, Honduras, Fiji, Dominican Republic, Solomon Islands, Montenegro, Seychelles, and Kosovo and 9 cases of U-Turn Democratization in Thailand, Maldives, Tunisia, Bolivia, Zambia, Benin, North Macedonia, Lesotho, and Brazil. By country Throughout the history of democracy, enduring democracy advocates succeed almost always through peaceful means when there is a window of opportunity. One major type of opportunity include governments weakened after a violent shock. The other main avenue occurs when autocrats are not threatened by elections, and democratize while retaining power. The path to democracy can be long with setbacks along the way. Athens Benin Brazil Chile France The French Revolution (1789) briefly allowed a wide franchise. The French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars lasted for more than twenty years. The French Directory was more oligarchic. The First French Empire and the Bourbon Restoration restored more autocratic rule. The French Second Republic had universal male suffrage but was followed by the Second French Empire. The Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) resulted in the French Third Republic. Germany Germany established its first democracy in 1919 with the creation of the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary republic created following the German Empire's defeat in World War I. The Weimar Republic lasted only 14 years before it collapsed and was replaced by Nazi dictatorship. Historians continue to debate the reasons why the Weimar Republic's attempt at democratization failed. After Germany was militarily defeated in World War II, democracy was reestablished in West Germany during the U.S.-led occupation which undertook the denazification of society. United Kingdom In Great Britain, there was renewed interest in Magna Carta in the 17th century. The Parliament of England enacted the Petition of Right in 1628 which established certain liberties for subjects. The English Civil War (1642–1651) was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament, during which the idea of a political party took form with groups debating rights to political representation during the Putney Debates of 1647. Subsequently, the Protectorate (1653–59) and the English Restoration (1660) restored more autocratic rule although Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679, which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence. The Glorious Revolution in 1688 established a strong Parliament that passed the Bill of Rights 1689, which codified certain rights and liberties for individuals. It set out the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring that, unlike much of the rest of Europe, royal absolutism would not prevail. Only with the Representation of the People Act 1884 did a majority of the males get the vote. Greece Indonesia Italy In September 1847, violent riots inspired by Liberals broke out in Reggio Calabria and in Messina in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which were put down by the military. On 12 January 1848 a rising in Palermo spread throughout the island and served as a spark for the Revolutions of 1848 all over Europe. After similar revolutionary outbursts in Salerno, south of Naples, and in the Cilento region which were backed by the majority of the intelligentsia of the Kingdom, on 29 January 1848 King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies was forced to grant a constitution, using for a pattern the French Charter of 1830. This constitution was quite advanced for its time in liberal democratic terms, as was the proposal of a unified Italian confederation of states. On 11 February 1848, Leopold II of Tuscany, first cousin of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, granted the Constitution, with the general approval of his subjects. The Habsburg example was followed by Charles Albert of Sardinia (Albertine Statute; later became the constitution of the unified Kingdom of Italy and remained in force, with changes, until 1948) and by Pope Pius IX (Fundamental Statute). However, only King Charles Albert maintained the statute even after the end of the riots. The Kingdom of Italy, after the unification of Italy in 1861, was a constitutional monarchy. The new kingdom was governed by a parliamentary constitutional monarchy dominated by liberals. The Italian Socialist Party increased in strength, challenging the traditional liberal and conservative establishment. From 1915 to 1918, the Kingdom of Italy took part in World War I on the side of the Entente and against the Central Powers. In 1922, following a period of crisis and turmoil, the Italian fascist dictatorship was established. During World War II, Italy was first part of the Axis until it surrendered to the Allied powers (1940–1943) and then, as part of its territory was occupied by Nazi Germany with fascist collaboration, a co-belligerent of the Allies during the Italian resistance and the subsequent Italian Civil War, and the liberation of Italy (1943–1945). The aftermath of World War II left Italy also with an anger against the monarchy for its endorsement of the Fascist regime for the previous twenty years. These frustrations contributed to a revival of the Italian republican movement. Italy became a republic after the 1946 Italian institutional referendum held on 2 June, a day celebrated since as Festa della Repubblica. Italy has a written democratic constitution, resulting from the work of a Constituent Assembly formed by the representatives of all the anti-fascist forces that contributed to the defeat of Nazi and Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy and the Italian Civil War, and coming into force on 1 January 1948. Japan In Japan, limited democratic reforms were introduced during the Meiji period (when the industrial modernization of Japan began), the Taishō period (1912–1926), and the early Shōwa period. Despite pro-democracy movements such as the Freedom and People's Rights Movement (1870s and 1880s) and some proto-democratic institutions, Japanese society remained constrained by a highly conservative society and bureaucracy. Historian Kent E. Calder notes that writers that "Meiji leadership embraced constitutional government with some pluralist features for essentially tactical reasons" and that pre-World war II Japanese society was dominated by a "loose coalition" of "landed rural elites, big business, and the military" that was averse to pluralism and reformism. While the Imperial Diet survived the impacts of Japanese militarism, the Great Depression, and the Pacific War, other pluralistic institutions, such as political parties, did not. After World War II, during the Allied occupation, Japan adopted a much more vigorous, pluralistic democracy. Madagascar Malawi Latin America Countries in Latin America became independent between 1810 and 1825, and soon had some early experiences with representative government and elections. All Latin American countries established representative institutions soon after independence, the early cases being those of Colombia in 1810, Paraguay and Venezuela in 1811, and Chile in 1818. Adam Przeworski shows that some experiments with representative institutions in Latin America occurred earlier than in most European countries. Mass democracy, in which the working class had the right to vote, become common only in the 1930s and 1940s. Portugal Senegal Spain South Africa South Korea Soviet Union Switzerland Roman Republic Tunisia Ukraine United States of America The American Revolution (1765–1783) created the United States. The new Constitution established a relatively strong federal national government that included an executive, a national judiciary, and a bicameral Congress that represented states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives. In many fields, it was a success ideologically in the sense that a true republic was established that never had a single dictator, but voting rights were initially restricted to white male property owners (about 6% of the population). Slavery was not abolished in the Southern states until the constitutional Amendments of the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War (1861–1865). The provision of Civil Rights for African-Americans to overcome post-Reconstruction Jim Crow segregation in the South was achieved in the 1960s. Causes and factors There is considerable debate about the factors which affect (e.g., promote or limit) democratization. Factors discussed include economic, political, cultural, individual agents and their choices, international and historical. Economic factors Economic development and modernization theory Scholars such as Seymour Martin Lipset; Carles Boix and Susan Stokes, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens, and John Stephens argue that economic development increases the likelihood of democratization. Initially argued by Lipset in 1959, this subsequently been referred to as modernization theory. According to Daniel Treisman, there is "a strong and consistent relationship between higher income and both democratization and democratic survival in the medium term (10–20 years), but not necessarily in shorter time windows." Robert Dahl argued that market economies provided favorable conditions for democratic institutions. A higher GDP/capita correlates with democracy and some claim the wealthiest democracies have never been observed to fall into authoritarianism. The rise of Hitler and of the Nazis in Weimar Germany can be seen as an obvious counter-example, but although in early 1930s Germany was already an advanced economy, by that time, the country was also living in a state of economic crisis virtually since the first World War (in the 1910s), a crisis which was eventually worsened by the effects of the Great Depression. There is also the general observation that democracy was very rare before the industrial revolution. Empirical research thus led many to believe that economic development either increases chances for a transition to democracy, or helps newly established democracies consolidate. One study finds that economic development prompts democratization but only in the medium run (10–20 years). This is because development may entrench the incumbent leader but make it more difficult for him deliver the state to a son or trusted aide when he exits. However, the debate about whether democracy is a consequence of wealth, a cause of it, or both processes are unrelated, is far from conclusive. Another study suggests that economic development depends on the political stability of a country to promote democracy. Clark, Robert and Golder, in their reformulation of Albert Hirschman's model of Exit, Voice and Loyalty, explain how it is not the increase of wealth in a country per se which influences a democratization process, but rather the changes in the socio-economic structures that come together with the increase of wealth. They explain how these structure changes have been called out to be one of the main reasons several European countries became democratic. When their socioeconomic structures shifted because modernization made the agriculture sector more efficient, bigger investments of time and resources were used for the manufacture and service sectors. In England, for example, members of the gentry began investing more in commercial activities that allowed them to become economically more important for the state. This new kind of productive activities came with new economic power were assets became more difficult for the state to count and hence more difficult to tax. Because of this, predation was no longer possible and the state had to negotiate with the new economic elites to extract revenue. A sustainable bargain had to be reached because the state became more dependent of its citizens remaining loyal and, with this, citizens had now leverage to be taken into account in the decision making process for the country. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi argue that while economic development makes democracies less likely to turn authoritarian, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that development causes democratization (turning an authoritarian state into a democracy). Economic development can boost public support for authoritarian regimes in the short-to-medium term. Andrew J. Nathan argues that China is a problematic case for the thesis that economic development causes democratization. Michael Miller finds that development increases the likelihood of "democratization in regimes that are fragile and unstable, but makes this fragility less likely to begin with." There is research to suggest that greater urbanization, through various pathways, contributes to democratization. Numerous scholars and political thinkers have linked a large middle class to the emergence and sustenance of democracy, whereas others have challenged this relationship. In "Non-Modernization" (2022), Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that modernization theory cannot account for various paths of political development "because it posits a link between economics and politics that is not conditional on institutions and culture and that presumes a definite endpoint—for example, an 'end of history'." A meta-analysis by Gerardo L. Munck of research on Lipset's argument shows that a majority of studies do not support the thesis that higher levels of economic development leads to more democracy. A 2024 study linked industrialization to democratization, arguing that large-scale employment in manufacturing made mass mobilization easier to occur and harder to repress. Capital Mobility Theories on causes to democratization such as economic development focus rather on the aspect of gaining capital, capital mobility focuses on the movement of money and the across borders of countries and different financial instruments and the corresponding restrictions. Over the past decades they have been multiple theories as to what the relationship is between capital mobility and democratization. The “doomsway view” is that capital mobility is an inherent threat to underdeveloped democracies by worsening the economic inequalities and favoring the interests of powerful elites and external actors over broader societal, which might lead to depending on money from outside, therefore affected by the economic situation in other countries. Sylvia Maxfield argues that a bigger demand for transparency in both the private and public sectors by some investors can contribute to a strengthening of democratic institutions and can encourage democratic consolidation. A 2016 study found that preferential trade agreements can increase democratization of a country, especially in case of trade with other democracies. A 2020 study found increased trade between democracies reduces democratic backsliding, while trade between democracies and autocracies reduces democratization of the autocracies. Trade and capital mobility often involve international organizations, such as the International Money Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO), which can condition financial assistance or trade agreements on democratic reforms. Classes, cleavages and alliances Sociologist Barrington Moore Jr., in his influential Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966), argues that the distribution of power among classes – the peasantry, the bourgeoise and the landed aristocracy – and the nature of alliances between classes determined whether democratic, authoritarian or communist revolutions occurred. Moore also argued there were at least "three routes to the modern world" – the liberal democratic, the fascist, and the communist – each deriving from the timing of industrialization and the social structure at the time of transition. Thus, Moore challenged modernization theory, by stressing that there was not one path to the modern world and that economic development did not always bring about democracy. Many authors have questioned parts of Moore's arguments. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens, and John D. Stephens, in Capitalist Development and Democracy (1992), raise questions about Moore's analysis of the role of the bourgeoisie in democratization. Eva Bellin argues that under certain circumstances, the bourgeoise and labor are more likely to favor democratization, but less so under other circumstances. Samuel Valenzuela argues that, counter to Moore's view, the landed elite supported democratization in Chile. A comprehensive assessment conducted by James Mahoney concludes that "Moore's specific hypotheses about democracy and authoritarianism receive only limited and highly conditional support." A 2020 study linked democratization to the mechanization of agriculture: as landed elites became less reliant on the repression of agricultural workers, they became less hostile to democracy. According to political scientist David Stasavage, representative government is "more likely to occur when a society is divided across multiple political cleavages." A 2021 study found that constitutions that emerge through pluralism (reflecting distinct segments of society) are more likely to induce liberal democracy (at least, in the short term). Political-economic factors Rulers' need for taxation Robert Bates and Donald Lien, as well as David Stasavage, have argued that rulers' need for taxes gave asset-owning elites the bargaining power to demand a say on public policy, thus giving rise to democratic institutions. Montesquieu argued that the mobility of commerce meant that rulers had to bargain with merchants in order to tax them, otherwise they would leave the country or hide their commercial activities. Stasavage argues that the small size and backwardness of European states, as well as the weakness of European rulers, after the fall of the Roman Empire meant that European rulers had to obtain consent from their population to govern effectively. According to Clark, Golder, and Golder, an application of Albert O. Hirschman's exit, voice, and loyalty model is that if individuals have plausible exit options, then a government may be more likely to democratize. James C. Scott argues that governments may find it difficult to claim a sovereignty over a population when that population is in motion. Scott additionally asserts that exit may not solely include physical exit from the territory of a coercive state, but can include a number of adaptive responses to coercion that make it more difficult for states to claim sovereignty over a population. These responses can include planting crops that are more difficult for states to count, or tending livestock that are more mobile. In fact, the entire political arrangement of a state is a result of individuals adapting to the environment, and making a choice as to whether or not to stay in a territory. If people are free to move, then the exit, voice, and loyalty model predicts that a state will have to be of that population representative, and appease the populace in order to prevent them from leaving. If individuals have plausible exit options then they are better able to constrain a government's arbitrary behaviour through threat of exit. Inequality and democracy Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that the relationship between social equality and democratic transition is complicated: People have less incentive to revolt in an egalitarian society (for example, Singapore), so the likelihood of democratization is lower. In a highly unequal society (for example, South Africa under Apartheid), the redistribution of wealth and power in a democracy would be so harmful to elites that these would do everything to prevent democratization. Democratization is more likely to emerge somewhere in the middle, in the countries, whose elites offer concessions because (1) they consider the threat of a revolution credible and (2) the cost of the concessions is not too high. This expectation is in line with the empirical research showing that democracy is more stable in egalitarian societies. Other approaches to the relationship between inequality and democracy have been presented by Carles Boix, Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman, and Ben Ansell and David Samuels. In their 2019 book The Narrow Corridor and a 2022 study in the American Political Science Review, Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the nature of the relationship between elites and society determine whether stable democracy emerges. When elites are overly dominant, despotic states emerge. When society is overly dominant, weak states emerge. When elites and society are evenly balance, inclusive states emerge. Natural resources Research shows that oil wealth lowers levels of democracy and strengthens autocratic rule. According to Michael Ross, petroleum is the sole resource that has "been consistently correlated with less democracy and worse institutions" and is the "key variable in the vast majority of the studies" identifying some type of resource curse effect. A 2014 meta-analysis confirms the negative impact of oil wealth on democratization. Thad Dunning proposes a plausible explanation for Ecuador's return to democracy that contradicts the conventional wisdom that natural resource rents encourage authoritarian governments. Dunning proposes that there are situations where natural resource rents, such as those acquired through oil, reduce the risk of distributive or social policies to the elite because the state has other sources of revenue to finance this kind of policies that is not the elite wealth or income. And in countries plagued with high inequality, which was the case of Ecuador in the 1970s, the result would be a higher likelihood of democratization. In 1972, the military coup had overthrown the government in large part because of the fears of elites that redistribution would take place. That same year oil became an increasing financial source for the country. Although the rents were used to finance the military, the eventual second oil boom of 1979 ran parallel to the country's re-democratization. Ecuador's re-democratization can then be attributed, as argued by Dunning, to the large increase of oil rents, which enabled not only a surge in public spending but placated the fears of redistribution that had grappled the elite circles. The exploitation of Ecuador's resource rent enabled the government to implement price and wage policies that benefited citizens at no cost to the elite and allowed for a smooth transition and growth of democratic institutions. The thesis that oil and other natural resources have a negative impact on democracy has been challenged by historian Stephen Haber and political scientist Victor Menaldo in a widely cited article in the American Political Science Review (2011). Haber and Menaldo argue that "natural resource reliance is not an exogenous variable" and find that when tests of the relationship between natural resources and democracy take this point into account "increases in resource reliance are not associated with authoritarianism." Cultural factors Values and religion It is claimed by some that certain cultures are simply more conducive to democratic values than others. This view is likely to be ethnocentric. Typically, it is Western culture which is cited as "best suited" to democracy, with other cultures portrayed as containing values which make democracy difficult or undesirable. This argument is sometimes used by undemocratic regimes to justify their failure to implement democratic reforms. Today, however, there are many non-Western democracies. Examples include: India, Japan, Indonesia, Namibia, Botswana, Taiwan, and South Korea. Research finds that "Western-educated leaders significantly and substantively improve a country's democratization prospects". Huntington presented an influential, but also controversial arguments about Confucianism and Islam. Huntington held that that "In practice Confucian or Confucian-influenced societies have been inhospitable to democracy." He also held that "Islamic doctrine ... contains elements that may be both congenial and uncongenial to democracy," but generally thought that Islam was an obstacle to democratization. In contrast, Alfred Stepan was more optimistic about the compatibility of different religions and democracy. Steven Fish and Robert Barro have linked Islam to undemocratic outcomes. However, Michael Ross argues that the lack of democracies in some parts of the Muslim world has more to do with the adverse effects of the resource curse than Islam. Lisa Blaydes and Eric Chaney have linked the democratic divergence between the West and the Middle-East to the reliance on mamluks (slave soldiers) by Muslim rulers whereas European rulers had to rely on local elites for military forces, thus giving those elites bargaining power to push for representative government. Robert Dahl argued, in On Democracy, that countries with a "democratic political culture" were more prone for democratization and democratic survival. He also argued that cultural homogeneity and smallness contribute to democratic survival. Other scholars have however challenged the notion that small states and homogeneity strengthen democracy. A 2012 study found that areas in Africa with Protestant missionaries were more likely to become stable democracies. A 2020 study failed to replicate those findings. Sirianne Dahlum and Carl Henrik Knutsen offer a test of the Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel revised version of modernization theory, which focuses on cultural traits triggered by economic development that are presumed to be conducive to democratization. They find "no empirical support" for the Inglehart and Welzel thesis and conclude that "self-expression values do not enhance democracy levels or democratization chances, and neither do they stabilize existing democracies." Education It has long been theorized that education promotes stable and democratic societies. Research shows that education leads to greater political tolerance, increases the likelihood of political participation and reduces inequality. One study finds "that increases in levels of education improve levels of democracy and that the democratizing effect of education is more intense in poor countries". It is commonly claimed that democracy and democratization were important drivers of the expansion of primary education around the world. However, new evidence from historical education trends challenges this assertion. An analysis of historical student enrollment rates for 109 countries from 1820 to 2010 finds no support for the claim that democratization increased access to primary education around the world. It is true that transitions to democracy often coincided with an acceleration in the expansion of primary education, but the same acceleration was observed in countries that remained non-democratic. Wider adoption of voting advice applications can lead to increased education on politics and increased voter turnout. Social capital and civil society Civil society refers to a collection of non-governmental organizations and institutions that advance the interests, priorities and will of citizens. Social capital refers to features of social life—networks, norms, and trust—that allow individuals to act together to pursue shared objectives. Robert Putnam argues that certain characteristics make societies more likely to have cultures of civic engagement that lead to more participatory democracies. According to Putnam, communities with denser horizontal networks of civic association are able to better build the "norms of trust, reciprocity, and civic engagement" that lead to democratization and well-functioning participatory democracies. By contrasting communities in Northern Italy, which had dense horizontal networks, to communities in Southern Italy, which had more vertical networks and patron-client relations, Putnam asserts that the latter never built the culture of civic engagement that some deem as necessary for successful democratization. Sheri Berman has rebutted Putnam's theory that civil society contributes to democratization, writing that in the case of the Weimar Republic, civil society facilitated the rise of the Nazi Party. According to Berman, Germany's democratization after World War I allowed for a renewed development in the country's civil society; however, Berman argues that this vibrant civil society eventually weakened democracy within Germany as it exacerbated existing social divisions due to the creation of exclusionary community organizations. Subsequent empirical research and theoretical analysis has lent support for Berman's argument. Yale University political scientist Daniel Mattingly argues civil society in China helps the authoritarian regime in China to cement control. Clark, M. Golder, and S. Golder also argue that despite many believing democratization requires a civic culture, empirical evidence produced by several reanalyses of past studies suggest this claim is only partially supported. Philippe C. Schmitter also asserts that the existence of civil society is not a prerequisite for the transition to democracy, but rather democratization is usually followed by the resurrection of civil society (even if it did not exist previously). Research indicates that democracy protests are associated with democratization. According to a study by Freedom House, in 67 countries where dictatorships have fallen since 1972, nonviolent civic resistance was a strong influence over 70 percent of the time. In these transitions, changes were catalyzed not through foreign invasion, and only rarely through armed revolt or voluntary elite-driven reforms, but overwhelmingly by democratic civil society organizations utilizing nonviolent action and other forms of civil resistance, such as strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and mass protests. A 2016 study found that about a quarter of all cases of democracy protests between 1989 and 2011 lead to democratization. Theories based on political agents and choices Elite-opposition negotiations and contingency Scholars such as Dankwart A. Rustow, and Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter in their classic Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (1986), argued against the notion that there are structural "big" causes of democratization. These scholars instead emphasize how the democratization process occurs in a more contingent manner that depends on the characteristics and circumstances of the elites who ultimately oversee the shift from authoritarianism to democracy. O'Donnell and Schmitter proposed a strategic choice approach to transitions to democracy that highlighted how they were driven by the decisions of different actors in response to a core set of dilemmas. The analysis centered on the interaction among four actors: the hard-liners and soft-liners who belonged to the incumbent authoritarian regime, and the moderate and radical oppositions against the regime. This book not only became the point of reference for a burgeoning academic literature on democratic transitions, it was also read widely by political activists engaged in actual struggles to achieve democracy. Adam Przeworski, in Democracy and the Market (1991), offered the first analysis of the interaction between rulers and opposition in transitions to democracy using rudimentary game theory. and he emphasizes the interdependence of political and economic transformations. Elite-driven democratization Scholars have argued that processes of democratization may be elite-driven or driven by the authoritarian incumbents as a way for those elites to retain power amid popular demands for representative government. If the costs of repression are higher than the costs of giving away power, authoritarians may opt for democratization and inclusive institutions. According to a 2020 study, authoritarian-led democratization is more likely to lead to lasting democracy in cases when the party strength of the authoritarian incumbent is high. However, Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo argue that democratizing rules implemented by outgoing authoritarians may distort democracy in favor of the outgoing authoritarian regime and its supporters, resulting in "bad" institutions that are hard to get rid of. According to Michael K. Miller, elite-driven democratization is particularly likely in the wake of major violent shocks (either domestic or international) which provide openings to opposition actors to the authoritarian regime. Dan Slater and Joseph Wong argue that dictators in Asia chose to implement democratic reforms when they were in positions of strength in order to retain and revitalize their power. According to a study by political scientist Daniel Treisman, influential theories of democratization posit that autocrats "deliberately choose to share or surrender power. They do so to prevent revolution, motivate citizens to fight wars, incentivize governments to provide public goods, outbid elite rivals, or limit factional violence." His study shows that in many cases, "democratization occurred not because incumbent elites chose it but because, in trying to prevent it, they made mistakes that weakened their hold on power. Common mistakes include: calling elections or starting military conflicts, only to lose them; ignoring popular unrest and being overthrown; initiating limited reforms that get out of hand; and selecting a covert democrat as leader. These mistakes reflect well-known cognitive biases such as overconfidence and the illusion of control." Sharun Mukand and Dani Rodrik dispute that elite-driven democratization produce liberal democracy. They argue that low levels of inequality and weak identity cleavages are necessary for liberal democracy to emerge. A 2020 study by several political scientists from German universities found that democratization through bottom-up peaceful protests led to higher levels of democracy and democratic stability than democratization prompted by elites. The three dictatorship types, monarchy, civilian and military have different approaches to democratization as a result of their individual goals. Monarchic and civilian dictatorships seek to remain in power indefinitely through hereditary rule in the case of monarchs or through oppression in the case of civilian dictators. A military dictatorship seizes power to act as a caretaker government to replace what they consider a flawed civilian government. Military dictatorships are more likely to transition to democracy because at the onset, they are meant to be stop-gap solutions while a new acceptable government forms. Research suggests that the threat of civil conflict encourages regimes to make democratic concessions. A 2016 study found that drought-induced riots in Sub-Saharan Africa lead regimes, fearing conflict, to make democratic concessions. Scrambled constituencies Mancur Olson theorizes that the process of democratization occurs when elites are unable to reconstitute an autocracy. Olson suggests that this occurs when constituencies or identity groups are mixed within a geographic region. He asserts that this mixed geographic constituencies requires elites to for democratic and representative institutions to control the region, and to limit the power of competing elite groups. Death or ouster of dictator One analysis found that "Compared with other forms of leadership turnover in autocracies—such as coups, elections, or term limits—which lead to regime collapse about half of the time, the death of a dictator is remarkably inconsequential. ... of the 79 dictators who have died in office (1946–2014)... in the vast majority (92%) of cases, the regime persists after the autocrat's death." Women's suffrage One of the critiques of Huntington's periodization is that it doesn't give enough weight to universal suffrage. Pamela Paxton argues that once women's suffrage is taken into account, the data reveal "a long, continuous democratization period from 1893–1958, with only war-related reversals." International factors War and national security Jeffrey Herbst, in his paper "War and the State in Africa" (1990), explains how democratization in European states was achieved through political development fostered by war-making and these "lessons from the case of Europe show that war is an important cause of state formation that is missing in Africa today." Herbst writes that war and the threat of invasion by neighbors caused European state to more efficiently collect revenue, forced leaders to improve administrative capabilities, and fostered state unification and a sense of national identity (a common, powerful association between the state and its citizens). Herbst writes that in Africa and elsewhere in the non-European world "states are developing in a fundamentally new environment" because they mostly "gained Independence without having to resort to combat and have not faced a security threat since independence." Herbst notes that the strongest non-European states, South Korea and Taiwan, are "largely 'warfare' states that have been molded, in part, by the near constant threat of external aggression." Elizabeth Kier has challenged claims that total war prompts democratization, showing in the cases of the UK and Italy during World War I that the policies adopted by the Italian government during World War I prompted a fascist backlash whereas UK government policies towards labor undermined broader democratization. War and peace Wars may contribute to the state-building that precedes a transition to democracy, but war is mainly a serious obstacle to democratization. While adherents of the democratic peace theory believe that democracy causes peace, the territorial peace theory makes the opposite claim that peace causes democracy. In fact, war and territorial threats to a country are likely to increase authoritarianism and lead to autocracy. This is supported by historical evidence showing that in almost all cases, peace has come before democracy. A number of scholars have argued that there is little support for the hypothesis that democracy causes peace, but strong evidence for the opposite hypothesis that peace leads to democracy. Christian Welzel's human empowerment theory posits that existential security leads to emancipative cultural values and support for a democratic political organization. This is in agreement with theories based on evolutionary psychology. The so-called regality theory finds that people develop a psychological preference for a strong leader and an authoritarian form of government in situations of war or perceived collective danger. On the other hand, people will support egalitarian values and a preference for democracy in situations of peace and safety. The consequence of this is that a society will develop in the direction of autocracy and an authoritarian government when people perceive collective danger, while the development in the democratic direction requires collective safety. International institutions A number of studies have found that institutional institutions have helped facilitate democratization. Thomas Risse wrote in 2009, "there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effects for the new democracies." Scholars have also linked NATO expansion with playing a role in democratization. international forces can significantly affect democratization. Global forces like the diffusion of democratic ideas and pressure from international financial institutions to democratize have led to democratization. Promotion, and foreign influence and intervention The European Union has contributed to the spread of democracy, in particular by encouraging democratic reforms in aspiring member states. Thomas Risse wrote in 2009, "there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effects for the new democracies." Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have argued that close ties to the West increased the likelihood of democratization after the end of the Cold War, whereas states with weak ties to the West adopted competitive authoritarian regimes. A 2002 study found that membership in regional organizations "is correlated with transitions to democracy during the period from 1950 to 1992." A 2004 study found no evidence that foreign aid led to democratization. Democracies have often been imposed by military intervention, for example in Japan and Germany after World War II. In other cases, decolonization sometimes facilitated the establishment of democracies that were soon replaced by authoritarian regimes. For example, Syria, after gaining independence from French mandatory control at the beginning of the Cold War, failed to consolidate its democracy, so it eventually collapsed and was replaced by a Ba'athist dictatorship. Robert Dahl argued in On Democracy that foreign interventions contributed to democratic failures, citing Soviet interventions in Central and Eastern Europe and U.S. interventions in Latin America. However, the delegitimization of empires contributed to the emergence of democracy as former colonies gained independence and implemented democracy. Geographic factors Some scholars link the emergence and sustenance of democracies to areas with access to the sea, which tends to increase the mobility of people, goods, capital, and ideas. Historical factors Historical legacies In seeking to explain why North America developed stable democracies and Latin America did not, Seymour Martin Lipset, in The Democratic Century (2004), holds that the reason is that the initial patterns of colonization, the subsequent process of economic incorporation of the new colonies, and the wars of independence differ. The divergent histories of Britain and Iberia are seen as creating different cultural legacies that affected the prospects of democracy. A related argument is presented by James A. Robinson in "Critical Junctures and Developmental Paths" (2022). Sequencing and causality Scholars have discussed whether the order in which things happen helps or hinders the process of democratization. An early discussion occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Dankwart Rustow argued that "'the most effective sequence' is the pursuit of national unity, government authority, and political equality, in that order." Eric Nordlinger and Samuel Huntington stressed "the importance of developing effective governmental institutions before the emergence of mass participation in politics." Robert Dahl, in Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (1971), held that the "commonest sequence among the older and more stable polyarchies has been some approximation of the ... path [in which] competitive politics preceded expansion in participation." In the 2010s, the discussion focused on the impact of the sequencing between state building and democratization. Francis Fukuyama, in Political Order and Political Decay (2014), echoes Huntington's "state-first" argument and holds that those "countries in which democracy preceded modern state-building have had much greater problems achieving high-quality governance." This view has been supported by Sheri Berman, who offers a sweeping overview of European history and concludes that "sequencing matters" and that "without strong states...liberal democracy is difficult if not impossible to achieve." However, this state-first thesis has been challenged. Relying on a comparison of Denmark and Greece, and quantitative research on 180 countries across 1789–2019, Haakon Gjerløw, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Tore Wig, and Matthew C. Wilson, in One Road to Riches? (2022), "find little evidence to support the stateness-first argument." Based on a comparison of European and Latin American countries, Sebastián Mazzuca and Gerardo Munck, in A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap (2021), argue that counter to the state-first thesis, the "starting point of political developments is less important than whether the State–democracy relationship is a virtuous cycle, triggering causal mechanisms that reinforce each." In sequences of democratization for many countries, Morrison et al. found elections as the most frequent first element of the sequence of democratization but found this ordering does not necessarily predict successful democratization. The democratic peace theory claims that democracy causes peace, while the territorial peace theory claims that peace causes democracy. Notes References Sources Further reading Key works Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Albertus, Michael and Victor Menaldo. 2018. Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Berman, Sheri. 2019. Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day. New York: Oxford University Press. Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. New York: Cambridge University Press Brancati, Dawn. 2016. Democracy Protests: Origins, Features and Significance. New York: Cambridge University Press Carothers, Thomas. 1999. Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Collier, Ruth Berins. 1999. Paths Toward Democracy: Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. New York: Cambridge University Press Coppedge, Michael, Amanda Edgell, Carl Henrik Knutsen, and Staffan I. Lindberg (eds.). 2022. Why Democracies Develop and Decline. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Fukuyama, Francis. 2014. Political Order and Political Decay. From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Haggard, Stephen and Robert Kaufman. 2016. Dictators and Democrats: Elites, Masses, and Regime Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel. 2005. Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hadenius, Axel. 2001. Institutions and Democratic Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy." American Political Science Review 53(1): 69–105. Mainwaring, Scott, and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán. 2014. Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America. Emergence, Survival, and Fall. New York: Cambridge University Press. Møller, Jørgen and Svend-Erik Skaaning (eds.). 2016. The State-Democracy Nexus. Conceptual Distinctions, Theoretical Perspectives, and Comparative Approaches. London: Routledge. O'Donnell, Guillermo, and Philippe C. Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule. Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market. Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, José Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Rosenfeld, Bryn. 2020. The Autocratic Middle Class: How State Dependency Reduces the Demand for Democracy. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Schaffer, Frederic C. Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture. 1998. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Teele, Dawn Langan. 2018. Forging the Franchise: The Political Origins of the Women's Vote. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Teorell, Jan. 2010. Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change in the World, 1972 -2006. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charles. 2004. Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tilly, Charles. 2007. Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Vanhanen, Tatu. 2003. Democratization: A Comparative Analysis of 170 Countries. Routledge. Welzel, Christian. 2013. Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Weyland, Kurt. 2014. Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America since the Revolutions of 1848. New York: Cambridge University Press Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. 2003. New York: W.W. Norton. Ziblatt, Daniel. 2017. Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Overviews of the research Bunce, Valerie. 2000. "Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations." Comparative Political Studies 33(6–7): 703–34. Cheibub, José Antonio, and James Raymond Vreeland. 2018. "Modernization Theory: Does Economic Development Cause Democratization?" pp. 3–21, in Carol Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Coppedge, Michael. 2012. Democratization and Research Methods. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Geddes, Barbara. 1999. "What Do We Know About Democratization After Twenty Years?" Annual Review of Political Science 2:1, 115–144. Mazzuca, Sebastián. 2010. "Macrofoundations of Regime Change: Democracy, State Formation, and Capitalist Development." Comparative Politics 43(1): 1–19. Møller, Jørgen, and Svend-Erik Skaaning. 2013. Democracy and Democratization in Comparative Perspective: Conceptions, Conjunctures, Causes and Consequences. London, UK: Routledge. Munck, Gerardo L. 2015. "Democratic Transitions," pp. 97–100, in James D. Wright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences 2nd edn., Vol. 6. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Science. Potter, David. 1997. "Explaining Democratization," pp. 1–40, in David Potter, David Goldblatt, Margaret Kiloh, and Paul Lewis (eds.), Democratization. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press and The Open University. Welzel, Christian. 2009. "Theories of Democratization", pp. 74–91, in Christian W. Haerpfer, Patrick Bernhagen, Ronald F. Inglehart, and Christian Welzel (eds.), Democratization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Wucherpfennig, Julian, and Franziska Deutsch. 2009. "Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited." Living Reviews in Democracy Vol. 1, p. 1–9. 9p. External links International IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) Muno, Wolfgang. 2012. "Democratization". InterAmerican Wiki: Terms – Concepts – Critical Perspectives. 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Populism

Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group with "the elite". It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed in the late 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties and movements since that time, often as a pejorative. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, with some scholars proposing that the term be rejected altogether. A common framework for interpreting populism is known as the ideational approach: this defines populism as an ideology that presents "the people" as a morally good force and contrasts them against "the elite", who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving. Populists differ in how "the people" are defined, but it can be based along class, ethnic, or national lines. Populists typically present "the elite" as comprising the political, economic, cultural, and media establishment, depicted as a homogeneous entity and accused of placing their own interests, and often the interests of other groups—such as large corporations, foreign countries, or immigrants—above the interests of "the people". According to the ideational approach, populism is often combined with other ideologies, such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism or consumerism. Thus, populists can be found at different locations along the left–right political spectrum, and there exist both left-wing populism and right-wing populism. Other scholars of the social sciences have defined the term populism differently. According to the popular agency definition used by some historians of United States history, populism refers to popular engagement of the population in political decision-making. An approach associated with the political scientist Ernesto Laclau presents populism as an emancipatory social force through which marginalised groups challenge dominant power structures. Some economists have used the term in reference to governments which engage in substantial public spending financed by foreign loans, resulting in hyperinflation and emergency measures. In popular discourse — where the term has often been used pejoratively — it has sometimes been used synonymously with demagogy, to describe politicians who present overly simplistic answers to complex questions in a highly emotional manner, or with political opportunism, to characterise politicians who exploit problems and seek to please voters without rational consideration as to the best course of action. Some scholars have linked populist policies to adverse economic outcomes, as "economic disintegration, decreasing macroeconomic stability, and the erosion of institutions typically go hand in hand with populist rule." Etymology and terminology The word "populism" has been contested, mistranslated and used in reference to a diverse variety of movements and beliefs. The political scientist Will Brett characterised it as "a classic example of a stretched concept, pulled out of shape by overuse and misuse", while the political scientist Paul Taggart has said of populism that it is "one of the most widely used but poorly understood political concepts of our time". In 1858, an English translator for Alphonse de Lamartine used the term as an antonym for "aristocratic". In the Russian Empire in the 1860s and 1870s, a left-leaning agrarian group referred to itself as the narodniki, which has often been translated into English as populists. But the first major use of the term in English was by members of the left-leaning agrarian People's Party and its predecessors, which were active in the United States from around 1889 to 1909. The Russian and American movements differed in various respects. In the 1920s, the term entered the French language, where it was used to describe a group of writers expressing sympathy for ordinary people. As the term has rarely been used as a political self-designation since the first decade of the 1900s, its meaning has broadened. As noted by the political scientist Margaret Canovan, "there has been no self-conscious international populist movement which might have attempted to control or limit the term's reference, and as a result those who have used it have been able to attach it a wide variety of meanings." In this it differs from other political terms, like "socialism" or "conservatism", which have been widely used as self-designations by individuals who have then presented their own, internal definitions of the word. Instead it shares similarities with terms such as "far left", "far right", or "extremist", which are often used in political discourse but rarely as self-designations. In news media, the term "populism" has often been conflated with other concepts like demagoguery, and generally presented as something to be "feared and discredited". It has often been applied to movements that are considered to be outside the political mainstream or a threat to democracy. The political scientists Yves Mény and Yves Surel noted that "populism" had become "a catchword, particularly in the media, to designate the newborn political or social movements which challenge the entrenched values, rules and institutions of democratic orthodoxy." Typically, the term is used against others, often in a pejorative sense to discredit opponents. Some of those who have repeatedly been referred to as "populists" in a pejorative sense have subsequently embraced the term while seeking to shed it of negative connotations. The French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen for instance was often accused of populism and eventually responded by stating that "Populism precisely is taking into account the people's opinion. Have people the right, in a democracy, to hold an opinion? If that is the case, then yes, I am a populist." Similarly, on being founded in 2003, the centre-left Lithuanian Labour Party declared: "we are and will be called populists." Following 2016, the year which saw the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union—both events linked to populism—the word populism became one of the most widely used terms by international political commentators. In 2017, the Cambridge Dictionary declared it the Word of the Year. Use in academia Until the 1950s, use of the term populism remained restricted largely to historians studying the People's Party, but in 1954 the US sociologist Edward Shils published an article proposing populism as a term to describe anti-elite trends in US society more broadly. Following on from Shils' article, during the 1960s the term "populism" became increasingly popular among sociologists and other academics in the social sciences. In 1967 a Conference on Populism was held at the London School of Economics, the participants of which failed to agree on a clear, single definition. As a result of this scholarly interest, an academic field known as "populism studies" emerged. Interest in the subject grew rapidly: between 1950 and 1960 about 160 publications on populism appeared, while between 1990 and 2000 that number was over 1500. From 2000 to 2015, about 95 papers and books including the term "populism" were catalogued each year by Web of Science. In 2016, it grew to 266; in 2017, it was 488, and in 2018, it was 615. Taggart argued that this academic interest was not consistent but appeared in "bursts" of research that reflected the political conditions of the time. Canovan noted that "if the notion of populism did not exist, no social scientist would deliberately invent it; the term is far too ambiguous for that". From examining how the term "populism" had been used, she proposed that seven different types of populism could be discerned. Three of these were forms of "agrarian populism"; these included farmers' radicalism, peasant movements, and intellectual agrarian socialism. The other four were forms of "political populism", representing populist dictatorship, populist democracy, reactionary populism, and politicians' populism. She noted that these were "analytical constructs" and that "real-life examples may well overlap several categories", adding that no single political movement fitted into all seven categories. In this way, Canovan conceived of populism as a family of related concepts rather than as a single concept in itself. The confusion surrounding the term has led some scholars to suggest that it should be abandoned by scholarship. In contrast to this view, the political scientists Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser stated that "while the frustration is understandable, the term populism is too central to debates about politics from Europe to the Americas to simply do away with." Similarly, Canovan noted that the term "does have comparatively clear and definite meanings in a number of specialist areas" and that it "provides a pointer, however shaky, to an interesting and largely unexplored area of political and social experience". The political scientists Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell thought that "if carefully defined, the term 'populism' can be used profitably to help us understand and explain a wide array of political actors". The political scientist Ben Stanley noted that "although the meaning of the term has proven controversial in the literature, the persistence with which it has recurred suggests the existence at least of an ineliminable core: that is, that it refers to a distinct pattern of ideas." Political scientist David Art argues that the concept of populism brings together disparate phenomena in an unhelpful manner, and ultimately obscures and legitimizes figures who are more comprehensively defined as nativists and authoritarians. Although academic definitions of populism have differed, most of them have focused on the idea that it should reference some form of relationship between "the people" and "the elite", and that it entailed taking an anti-establishment stance. Beyond that, different scholars have emphasised different features that they wish to use to define populism. These differences have occurred both within specific scholarly disciplines and among different disciplines, varying for instance among scholars focusing on different regions and different historical periods. Author Thomas Frank has criticized the common use of the term Populism to refer to far-right nativism and racism, noting that the original People's Party was relatively liberal on the rights of women and minorities by the standards of the time. The V-Party Dataset assesses populism as anti-elitism and people-centrism. Ideational definition A common approach to defining populism is known as the ideational approach. This emphasises the notion that populism should be defined according to specific ideas which underlie it, as opposed to certain economic policies or leadership styles which populist politicians may display. In this definition, the term populism is applied to political groups and individuals who make appeals to "the people" and then contrast this group against "the elite". Adopting this approach, Albertazzi and McDonnell define populism as an ideology that "pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous 'others' who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice". Similarly, the political scientist Carlos de la Torre defined populism as "a Manichean discourse that divides politics and society as the struggle between two irreconcilable and antagonistic camps: the people and the oligarchy or the power block." In this understanding, note Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, "populism always involves a critique of the establishment and an adulation of the common people", and according to Ben Stanley, populism itself is a product of "an antagonistic relationship" between "the people" and "the elite", and is "latent wherever the possibility occurs for the emergence of such a dichotomy". The political scientist Manuel Anselmi proposed that populism be defined as featuring a "homogeneous community-people" which "perceives itself as the absolute holder of popular sovereignty" and "expresses an anti-establishment attitude." This understanding conceives of populism as a discourse, ideology, or worldview. These definitions were initially employed largely in Western Europe, although later became increasingly popular in Eastern Europe and the Americas. According to this approach, populism is viewed as a "thin ideology" or "thin-centred ideology" which on its own is seen as too insubstantial to provide a blueprint for societal change. It thus differs from the "thick-centred" or "full" ideologies such as fascism, liberalism, and socialism, which provide more far-reaching ideas about social transformation. As a thin-centred ideology, populism is therefore attached to a thick-ideology by populist politicians. Thus, populism can be found merged with forms of nationalism, liberalism, socialism, federalism, or conservatism. According to Stanley, "the thinness of populism ensures that in practice it is a complementary ideology: it does not so much overlap with as diffuse itself throughout full ideologies." Populism is, according to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, "a kind of mental map through which individuals analyse and comprehend political reality". Mudde noted that populism is "moralistic rather than programmatic". It encourages a binary world-view in which everyone is divided into "friends and foes", with the latter being regarded not just as people who have "different priorities and values" but as being fundamentally "evil". In emphasising one's purity against the corruption and immorality of "the elite", from which "the people" must remain pure and untouched, populism prevents compromise between different groups. The incredible rise in research and discussion about populism, both academic and social, stems largely from efforts by ideational scholars to place centre stage the significance of appeals to the people beyond ideological differences, and to conceptualise populism as a discursive phenomenon. Nevertheless, the ideational school's approach to populism is problematic for the amount of substantive assumptions it imposes on how populism actually works as a discursive phenomenon, such as the idea that it is of a moral register, that vindications always refer to a homogeneous/pure people, or that it takes shape socially as an ideology. These assumptions can be counter-productive to the study of populism which has arguably become excessively conceptually deductive. Still, this does not mean we cannot come to a more minimal, formal definition of what populism is that can consensually group scholars and open up research to a broader scope, as indicated by Stavrakakis and De Cleen in defining populism as a type of discourse ‘characterized by a people/elite distinction and the claim to speak in the name of "the people."’ Right and left-wing As a result of the various different ideologies with which populism can be paired, the forms that populism can take vary widely. Populism itself cannot be positioned on the left–right political spectrum, and both right and left-wing populisms exist. Populist movements can also mix divisions between left and right, for instance by combining xenophobic attitudes commonly associated with the far-right with redistributive economic policies closer to those of the left. The ideologies with which populism can be paired can be contradictory, resulting in different forms of populism that can oppose each other. For instance, in Latin America during the 1990s, populism was often associated with politicians like Peru's Alberto Fujimori who promoted neoliberal economics, while in the 2000s it was instead associated with those like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez who promoted socialist programs. As well as populists of the left and right, populist figures like Italy's Beppe Grillo have been characterised as centrist and liberal, while groups like Turkey's Justice and Development Party have been described as combining populism with Islamism, and India's Bharatiya Janata Party has been seen as mixing populism with Hindu nationalism. Although populists of different ideological traditions can oppose each other, they can also form coalitions, as was seen in the Greek coalition government which brought together the left-wing populist Syriza and the right-wing populist Independent Greeks in 2015. Adherents of the ideational definition have also drawn a distinction between left and right-wing populists. The latter are presented as juxtaposing "the people" against both "the elite" and an additional group who are also regarded as being separate from "the people" and whom "the elite" is seen to favour, such as immigrants, homosexuals, travellers, or communists. Populist leaders thus "come in many different shades and sizes" but, according to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, share one common element: "a carefully crafted image of the vox populi". Stanley expressed the view that although there are "certain family resemblances" that can be seen between populist groups and individuals, there was "no coherent tradition" unifying all of them. While many left-wing parties in the early 20th century presented themselves as the vanguard of the proletariat, by the early 21st century left-wing populists were presenting themselves as the "voice of the people" more widely. On the political right, populism is often combined with nationalism, with "the people" and "the nation" becoming fairly interchangeable categories in their discourse, or combined with religion where "the people" are identified based on religion. Some political scientists have also argued that populism can be divided into left-wing inclusionary and right-wing exclusionary forms, though some argue against a dichotomy between inclusionary and exclusionary forms, such as right-wing populists welcoming culturally proximate migrants with transnational solidarity. "The people" For populists, "the people" are presented as being homogeneous, and also virtuous. In simplifying the complexities of reality, the concept of "the people" is vague and flexible, with this plasticity benefitting populists who are thus able to "expand or contract" the concept "to suit the chosen criteria of inclusion or exclusion" at any given time. In employing the concept of "the people", populists can encourage a sense of shared identity among different groups within a society and facilitate their mobilisation toward a common cause. One of the ways that populists employ the understanding of "the people" is in the idea that "the people are sovereign", that in a democratic state governmental decisions should rest with the population and that if they are ignored then they might mobilise or revolt. This is the sense of "the people" employed in the late 19th century United States by the People's Party and which has also been used by later populist movements in that country. A second way in which "the people" is conceived by populists combines a socioeconomic or class based category with one that refers to certain cultural traditions and popular values. The concept seeks to vindicate the dignity of a social group who regard themselves as being oppressed by a dominant "elite" who are accused of treating "the people's" values, judgements, and tastes with suspicion or contempt. A third use of "the people" by populists employs it as a synonym for "the nation", whether that national community be conceived in either ethnic or civic terms. In such a framework, all individuals regarded as being "native" to a particular state, either by birth or by ethnicity, could be considered part of "the people". Populism typically entails "celebrating them the people", in Stanley's words. The political scientist Paul Taggart proposed the term "the heartland" to better reflect what populists often mean in their rhetoric. According to Taggart, "the heartland" was the place "in which, in the populist imagination, a virtuous and unified population resides". Who this "heartland" is can vary between populists, even within the same country. For instance, in Britain, the centre-right Conservative Party conceived of "Middle England" as its heartland, while the far-right British National Party conceived of the "native British people" as its heartland. Mudde noted that for populists, "the people" "are neither real nor all-inclusive, but are in fact a mythical and constructed sub-set of the whole population". They are an imagined community, much like the imagined communities embraced and promoted by nationalists. Populism often entails presenting "the people" as the underdog. Populists typically seek to reveal to "the people" how they are oppressed. In doing so, they do not seek to change "the people", but rather seek to preserve the latter's "way of life" as it presently exists, regarding it as a source of good. For populists, the way of life of "the people" is presented as being rooted in history and tradition and regarded as being conducive to public good. Although populist leaders often present themselves as representatives of "the people", they often come from elite strata in society; examples like Berlusconi, Fortuyn, and Haider were all well-connected to their country's political and economic elites. Populism can also be subdivided into "inclusionary" and "exclusionary" forms, which differ in their conceptions of who "the people" are. Inclusionary populism tends to define "the people" more broadly, accepting and advocating for minority and marginalised groups, while exclusionary populism defines "the people" in a much stricter sense, generally being focused on a particular sociocultural group and antagonistic against minority groups. However, this is not exactly a pure dichotomy—exclusive populists can still give voice to those who feel marginalised by the political status quo and include minorities if it is advantageous, while inclusive populists can vary significantly in how inclusive they actually are. In addition, all populisms are implicitly exclusionary, since they define "the people" against "the elite", thus some scholars argue that the difference between populisms is not whether a particular populism excludes but whom it excludes from its conception of "the people". "The elite" Anti-elitism is widely considered the central characteristic feature of populism, although Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser argued that anti-elitism alone was not evidence of populism. Rather, according to Stanley, in populist discourse the "fundamental distinguishing feature" of "the elite" is that it is in an "adversarial relationship" with "the people". In defining "the elite", populists often condemn not only the political establishment, but also the economic elite, cultural elite, academic elite, and the media elite, which they present as one homogeneous, corrupt group. In early 21st century India, the populist Bharatiya Janata Party for instance accused the dominant Indian National Congress party, the Communist Party of India, NGOs, academia, and the English-language media of all being part of "the elite". When operating in liberal democracies, populists often condemn dominant political parties as part of "the elite" but at the same time do not reject the party political system altogether, instead either calling for or claiming to be a new kind of party different from the others. Although condemning almost all those in positions of power within a given society, populists often exclude both themselves and those sympathetic to their cause even when they too are in positions of power. For instance, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), a right-wing populist group, regularly condemned "the media" in Austria for defending "the elite", but excluded from that the Kronen Zeitung, a widely read tabloid that supported the FPÖ and its leader Jörg Haider. When populists take governmental power, they are faced with a challenge in that they now represent a new elite. In such cases—like Chávez in Venezuela and Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia—populists retain their anti-establishment rhetoric by making changes to their concept of "the elite" to suit their new circumstances, alleging that real power is not held by the government but other powerful forces who continue to undermine the populist government and the will of "the people" itself. In these instances, populist governments often conceptualise "the elite" as those holding economic power. In Venezuela, for example, Chávez blamed the economic elite for frustrating his reforms, while in Greece, the left-wing populist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused "the lobbyists and oligarchs of Greece" of undermining his administration. In populist instances like these, the claims made have some basis in reality, as business interests seek to undermine leftist-oriented economic reform. Although left-wing populists who combine populist ideas with forms of socialism most commonly present "the elite" in economic terms, the same strategy is also employed by some right-wing populists. In the United States during the late 2000s, the Tea Party movement—which presented itself as a defender of the capitalist free market—argued that big business, and its allies in Congress, seeks to undermine the free market and kill competition by stifling small business. Among some 21st century right-wing populists, "the elite" are presented as being left-wing radicals committed to political correctness. The Dutch right-wing populist leader Pim Fortuyn referred to this as the "Church of the Left". In some instances, particularly in Latin America and Africa, "the elites" are conceived not just in economic but also in ethnic terms, representing what political scientists have termed ethnopopulism. In Bolivia, for example, the left-wing populist leader Evo Morales juxtaposed the mestizo and indigenous "people" against an overwhelmingly European "elite", declaring that "We Indians [i.e. indigenous people] are Latin America's moral reserve". In the Bolivian case, this was not accompanied by a racially exclusionary approach, but with an attempt to build a pan-ethnic coalition which included European Bolivians against the largely European Bolivian elite. In South Africa, the populist Julius Malema has presented black South Africans as the "people" whom he claims to represent, calling for the expropriation of land owned by the white minority without compensation. In areas like Europe where nation-states are more ethnically homogeneous, this ethnopopulist approach is rare given that the "people" and "elite" are typically of the same ethnicity. For some populist leaders and movements, the term "the elite" also refers to an academic or intellectual establishment and, as such, entails scholars, intellectuals, experts, or organized science as a whole. Such leaders and movements may criticise scientific knowledge as abstract, useless, and ideologically biased, and instead demand common sense, experiential knowledge, and practical solutions to be "true knowledge". In various instances, populists claim that "the elite" is working against the interests of the country. In the European Union (EU), for instance, various populist groups allege that their national political elites put the interests of the EU itself over those of their own nation-states. Similarly, in Latin America populists often charge political elites with championing the interests of the United States over those of their own countries. Another common tactic among populists, particularly in Europe, is the accusation that "the elites" place the interests of immigrants above those of the native population. The Zambian populist Michael Sata for instance adopted a xenophobic stance during his campaigns by focusing his criticism on the country's Asian minority, decrying Chinese and Indian ownership of businesses and mines. In India, the right-wing populist leader Narendra Modi rallied supporters against Muslim Bangladeshi migrants, promising to deport them. In instances where populists are also antisemitic (such as Jobbik in Hungary and Attack in Bulgaria) the elites are accused of favouring Israeli and wider Jewish interests above those of the national group. Antisemitic populists often accuse "the elite" of being made up of many Jews as well. When populists emphasise ethnicity as part of their discourse, "the elite" can sometimes be presented as "ethnic traitors". General will A third component of the ideational approach to populism is the idea of the general will, or volonté générale. An example of this populist understanding of the general will can be seen in Chávez's 2007 inaugural address, when he stated that "All individuals are subject to error and seduction, but not the people, which possesses to an eminent degree of consciousness of its own good and the measure of its independence. Because of that its judgement is pure, its will is strong, and none can corrupt or even threaten it." For populists, the general will of "the people" is something that should take precedence over the preferences of "the elite". As noted by Stanley, the populist idea of the general will is connected to ideas of majoritarianism and authenticity. Highlighting how populists appeal to the ideals of "authenticity and ordinariness", he noted that what was most important to populists was "to appeal to the of an authentic people" and to cultivate the idea that they are the "genuine" representatives of "the people". In doing so they often emphasise their physical proximity to "the people" and their distance from "the elites". Sheri Berman notes that while populists often engage in democratic rhetoric, they frequently ignore or devalue norms of liberal democracy such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, legitimate opposition, separation of powers and constraints on presidential power. In emphasising the general will, many populists share the critique of representative democratic government previously espoused by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This approach regards representative governance as an aristocratic and elitist system in which a country's citizens are regarded as passive entities. Rather than choosing laws for themselves, these citizens are only mobilised for elections in which their only option is to select their representatives rather than taking a more direct role in legislation and governance. Populists often favour the use of direct democratic measures such as referendums and plebiscites. For this reason, Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser suggested that "it can be argued that an elective affinity exists between populism and direct democracy", although Stanley cautioned that "support for direct democracy is not an essential attribute of populism." Populist notions of the "general will" and its links with populist leaders are usually based on the idea of "common sense". Versus elitism and pluralism Stanley noted that rather than being restricted purely to populists, appeals to "the people" had become "an unavoidable aspect of modern political practice", with elections and referendums predicated on the notion that "the people" decide the outcome. Thus, a critique of the ideational definition of populism is that it becomes too broad and can potentially apply to all political actors and movements. Responding to this critique, Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser argued that the ideational definition did allow for a "non-populism" in the form of both elitism and pluralism. Elitists share the populist binary division but reverse the associations. Whereas populists regard the elites as bad and the common people as good, elitists view "the people" as being vulgar, immoral, and dangerous and "the elites" as being morally, culturally, and intellectually superior. Elitists want politics to be largely or entirely an elite affair; some—such as Spain's Francisco Franco and Chile's Augusto Pinochet—reject democracy altogether, while others—like Spain's José Ortega y Gasset and Austria's Joseph Schumpeter—support a limited model of democracy. Pluralism differs from both elitism and populism by rejecting any dualist framework, instead viewing society as a broad array of overlapping social groups, each with their own ideas and interests. Pluralists argue that political power should not be held by any single group—whether defined by their gender, ethnicity, economic status, or political party membership—and should instead be distributed. Pluralists encourage governance through compromise and consensus in order to reflect the interests of as many of these groups as possible. Unlike populists, pluralists do not believe that such a thing as a "general will" exists. Some politicians do not seek to demonise a social elite; for many conservatives for example, the social elite are regarded as the bulwark of the traditional social order, while for some liberals, the social elite are perceived as an enlightened legislative and administrative cadre. Other definitions The popular agency definition to populism uses the term in reference to a democratic way of life that is built on the popular engagement of the population in political activity. In this understanding, populism is usually perceived as a positive factor in the mobilisation of the populace to develop a communitarian form of democracy. This approach to the term is common among historians in the United States and those who have studied the late 19th century People's Party. The Laclauan definition of populism, so called after the Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau who developed it, uses the term in reference to what proponents regard as an emancipatory force that is the essence of politics. In this concept of populism, it is believed to mobilise excluded sectors of society against dominant elites and changing the status quo. Laclau's initial emphasis was on class antagonisms arising between different classes, although he later altered his perspective to claim that populist discourses could arise from any part of the socio-institutional structure. For Laclau, socialism was "the highest form of populism". His understandings of the topic derived in large part from his focus on politics in Latin America. This definition is popular among critics of liberal democracy and is widely used in critical studies and in studies of West European and Latin American politics. Harry C. Boyte for example defined populism as "a politics of civic agency" which "develops the power of 'the people' to shape their destiny", as examples citing both the Russian narodniks and the South African Black Consciousness Movement. The socioeconomic definition of populism applies the term to what it regards as an irresponsible form of economic policy by which a government engages in a period of massive public spending financed by foreign loans, after which the country falls into hyperinflation and harsh economic adjustments are then imposed. This use of the term was used by economists like Rudiger Dornbusch and Jeffrey Sachs and was particularly popular among scholars of Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s. Since that time, this definition continued to be used by some economists and journalists, particularly in the US, but was uncommon among other social sciences. This definition relies on focusing on socialist and other left-wing forms of populism; it does not apply to other groups commonly understood as populist which adopted right-wing stances on economic issues. An additional framework has been described as the "political-strategic" approach. This applies the term populism to a political strategy in which a charismatic leader seeks to govern based on direct and unmediated connection with their followers. Kurt Weyland defined this conception of populism as "a political strategy through which a personalist leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers". This is a definition of the term that is popular among scholars of non-Western societies. By focusing on leadership, this concept of populism does not allow for the existence of populist parties or populist social movements; under this definition, for instance, the US People's Party which first invented the term populism could not be considered populist. Mudde suggested that although the idea of a leader having direct access to "the people" was a common element among populists, it is best regarded as a feature which facilitates rather than defines populism. In popular discourse, populism is sometimes used in a negative sense in reference to politics which involves promoting extremely simple solutions to complex problems in a highly emotional manner. Mudde suggested that this definition "seems to have instinctive value" but was difficult to employ empirically because almost all political groups engage in sloganeering and because it can be difficult to differentiate an argument made emotionally from one made rationally. Mudde thought that this phenomenon was better termed demagogy rather than populism. Another use of the term in popular discourse is to describe opportunistic policies designed to quickly please voters rather than deciding a more rational course of action. Examples of this would include a governing political party lowering taxes before an election or promising to provide things to the electorate which the state cannot afford to pay for. Mudde suggested that this phenomenon is better described as opportunism rather than populism. Another way of defining populism is by defining it as a political style. Moffitt states that political style can be defined as “the repertoires of embodied, symbolically mediated performance made to audiences that are used to create and navigate the fields of power that comprise the political, stretching from the domain of government through to everyday life.” This definition acknowledges that populism includes both rhetorical aspects such as gestures and body language, spoken language, argumentation while also acknowledging that populism includes aesthetic aspects such as fashion, self-presentation, images, and designs. This definition also acknowledges that political performances are constructed. Moffitt argues that an ideational approach doesn’t include the emphasis of performative elements while political style does. In addition, populism cannot be considered an ideology because it doesn’t consist of specific ideas or ideals related to economic or political theory and policy. Populism as a political style is only concerned with the way that political ideas are presented and performed. According to Moffitt, this is why populism can appear across a number of different ideological spectrums on the left and right. Populism has no political ideology; it is only a political style. Moffitt notes that populism as a political style has certain features which define it. The first of these features is ‘the People’ versus ‘the Elite’. Moffitt acknowledges that the “dichotomic division of society between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’” is one of the most popular definitions of populism but is only one of the features of populism as a political style. The second feature of populism as a political style is the use of ‘bad manners’. ‘Bad manners’ consists of, “slang, swearing, political incorrectness, and being over demonstrative and ‘colorful’, as opposed to the ‘high’ behaviors of rigidness, rationality, composure and use of technocratic language.” The third feature of populism as a political style is crisis, breakdown, or threat. This is the exigence that populists use. Moffitt writes that, “Crises are often related to the breakdown between citizens and their representatives, but can also be related to immigration, economic difficulties, perceived injustice, military threat, social change or other issues.” This performance relates to a distrust of deliberation, negotiation, consultations, reviews, reports, and the complicated nature of designing policy solutions. There are multiple implications for populism being understood as a political style. The first implication that Moffitt points out is that populism as a political style allows people to understand why populism doesn’t adhere to the common left/right ideological spectrum. Populism is not a political ideology; it is just a way to present ideas through both rhetorical and aesthetic aspects. In addition, populism as a political style means that populism no longer has to be conceptualized as a binary category but can instead be conceptualized as a gradational concept. This means that populist actors can, depending on the time, be more or less populist. However, this means that there has to be an opposite political style to populism. Moffitt notes that the opposing political style to populism is a technocratic political style. In contrast with appeal to ‘the people’ vs. ‘the elite’, ‘bad manners’, and the exigence of a crisis, breakdown threat, the technocratic political style emphasizes appeal to expertise, ‘good manners’, and stability and progress. This distinction between these two political styles allows political actors to be plotted on a scale rather than being seen as populist or not. It also allows for the scale to be adjusted in relation to different political elections in different years due to the fact that populists might not always utilize the populist political style to the same extent as they did in years prior. Demand-side factors One area of debate in explaining populism is whether its main cause is based in the needs of citizens (demand-side explanations) or in the failures of governments (supply-side explanations). In focusing on the changing grievances or demands of citizens, demand-side explanations can be seen as bottom-up explanations, while supply-side explanations, in focusing on political actors and institutions, can be seen as top-down explanations. Various demand-side factors have been claimed to make it more likely that individuals will support populist ideas. Economists and political economists often emphasize the importance of economic concerns while political scientists and sociologists often emphasize sociocultural concerns in their analysis of demand-side factors. Economic grievance The economic grievance thesis argues that economic factors, such as deindustrialisation, economic liberalisation, and deregulation, are causing the formation of a 'left-behind' precariat with low job security, high inequality, and wage stagnation, who then support populism. Some theories only focus on the effect of economic crises, or inequality. Another objection for economic reasons is due to the globalization that is taking place in the world today. In addition to criticism of the widening inequality caused by the elite, the widening inequality among the general public caused by the influx of immigrants and other factors due to globalization is also a target of populist criticism. The evidence of increasing economic disparity and volatility of family incomes is clear, particularly in the United States, as shown by the work of Thomas Piketty and others. Commentators such as Martin Wolf emphasize the importance of economics. They warn that such trends increase resentment and make people susceptible to populist rhetoric. Evidence for this is mixed. At the macro level, political scientists report that xenophobia, anti-immigrant ideas, and resentment towards out-groups tend to be higher during difficult economic times. Economic crises have been associated with gains by far-right political parties. However, there is little evidence at the micro- or individual level to link individual economic grievances and populist support. Populist politicians tend to put pressure on central bank independence. Modernisation The modernisation losers theory argues that certain aspects of transition to modernity have caused demand for populism. Some arguments rely on the belief that anomie has followed industrialisation and resulted in "dissolution, fragmentation and differentiation", weakening the traditional ties of civil society, and increasing individualization. Populism offers a broad identity which gives sovereignty to the previously marginalized masses as "the people". However, empirical studies suggest that supporters of radical right-wing populism occur across the social spectrum, and are not more likely to appear in groups defined as "modernisation losers". Cultural backlash Other theories argue that grievances have a primarily sociocultural rather than an economic basis. For example, the cultural backlash thesis argues that right-wing populism is reaction to the rise of postmaterialism in many developed countries, including the spread of feminism, multiculturalism, and environmentalism. According to this view, the spread of ideas and values through a society challenges accepted norms until society reaches a 'tipping point', which causes a reaction, in this case support for right-wing populism. Some theories limit this argument to being a reaction to just the increase of ethnic diversity from immigration. Such theories are particularly popular with sociologists and with political scientists studying industrial world and American politics. The empiric studies testing this theory have produced highly contradicting results. At the micro- or individual level, there are strong connections between individual positions on sociocultural issues (such as immigration policy and "racial animus") and right-wing populist voting. However, at the macro level, studies have not shown clear relationships between measures of populist sentiment in countries and actual right-wing party support. However, there is strong evidence from political scientists and political psychologists documenting the influence of group-based identity threats on voters. Those who identify as part of a group and perceive it as being under threat are likely to support political actors who promise to protect the status and identity of their group. While such research often focuses on white identity, results apply broadly to other social groups that perceive themselves to be under threat. Recent democratization The length of time since a country has been democratized has also been linked to its potential for populist success. This is claimed to be because younger democracies have less established political parties and weaker liberal democratic norms. For example, populist success in Eastern Europe has been linked to the legacy of communism. However, this explanation suffers from the lack of success of populism in most post-communist countries. Supply-side factors Supply-side explanations focus on political actors and institutions and the ways in which governments may fail to respond to the changing conditions that affect citizens. Economic, social, and other structural trends are seen as being modified by institutions as they determine political outcomes. In this view, citizens turn to populism when governments do not respond effectively to the challenges they and their citizens face. Research supports the idea that populism is more likely to thrive when mainstream parties on the center-left and center-right do not address important contemporary issues and do not offer clear alternatives to voters. Coalitions that blur distinctions on positions are also likely to increase populism. In Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), Samuel P. Huntington argues that rapid change (social or economic) in a society will increase the demands of its citizens. Unless political institutions are responsive and effective, they are unlikely to respond to and satisfy such demands. If political systems are weak or have become unresponsive over time, then dissatisfaction, political disorder and even violence become more likely. Political institutions that do not respond to social and economic changes are likely to fail. Responsive political systems can adapt to more severe challenges than unresponsive ones. Huntington's ideas grew out of work on Third World countries, but are also applicable to advanced industrial countries. In a supply-side view of American politics, populism can be seen as a symptom of institutional decay. It can be suggested that political factors such as gerrymandering, the Electoral College, special-interest lobbying and dark money, are distorting political and economic debate, and decreasing the ability of the government to respond to the concerns of large numbers of citizens. This in turn generates dissatisfaction, which may increase the likelihood that citizens will support populism. Scholars studying the European Union have suggested that European integration may have had the undesired effect of decreasing the system's responsiveness to voters, as law and policy-making increasingly became the responsibility of the European Union. This too may have increased support for populism. Institutions such as the European Central Bank may also distance decision-making from electoral power. It has been argued that political parties themselves have become disconnected from society, and unable to respond to citizen's concerns. Voluntarism Another underlying debate in discussions of populism is the comparison of structural and voluntarist approaches. Voluntarist or agency-based explanations focus on the behaviors of politicians and parties, including populists themselves. An important area of research is the examination of how parties develop, and how responses to new parties shape them. Successful politicians and parties shape the formation of agendas, identifying and increasing the salience of issues which they believe will benefit them. Established parties may adopt various strategies when a new party appears: dismissive, adversarial, or accommodative. A dismissive strategy such as ignoring a party and its issue(s) can only be effective if the issue involved is unimportant or short-lived. Otherwise, dismissing an issue leaves ownership of the issue with the new party and allows them to attract any voters who see the issue as important. In an adversarial response, a mainstream party directly engages over an issue, emphasizing their opposition to the new party's position. This increases the issue's visibility, makes it a focus of ongoing political debate, and can reinforce the new party's ownership of it. An adversarial response can be to the benefit of a mainstream party if most voters, or at least the mainstream party's voters, disagree with the new party's position and are unlikely to ally with it as a result. An accommodative strategy is to move the mainstream party closer to the position advocated by the new party, in hopes of retaining voters who care about the issue. This works best if adopted early, before a new party is heavily identified with an issue. If an issue is important, long-lived and of strong interest to its supporters, a mainstream party can benefit from quickly shifting its position to one closer to the new party. Similarly, a populist party with neo-fascist or antidemocratic roots may be able to increase its support by moderating its views to a milder form of its original position (e.g. from neofascist to xenophobic.) Right-wing populists are more effective in mobilizing voters around issues when mainstream parties ignore the issue or offer alternatives that are not aligned with voter opinions. They are also more likely to benefit from emphasizing social and cultural issues such as immigration and race, appealing to voters who are positioned economically towards the left-wing but hold socially conservative views. Mobilisation There are three forms of political mobilisation which populists have adopted: that of the populist leader, the populist political party, and the populist social movement. The reasons why voters are attracted to populists differ, but common catalysts for the rise of populists include dramatic economic decline or a systematic corruption scandal that damages established political parties. For instance, the Great Recession of 2007 and its impact on the economies of southern Europe was a catalyst for the rise of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, while the Mani pulite corruption scandal of the early 1990s played a significant part in the rise of the Italian populist Silvio Berlusconi. Another catalyst for the growth of populism is a widespread perception among voters that the political system is unresponsive to them. This can arise when elected governments introduce policies that are unpopular with their voters but which are implemented because they are considered to be "responsible" or imposed by supranational organisations. In Latin America, for example, many countries passed unpopular economic reforms under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank while in Europe, many countries in the European Union were pushed to implement unpopular economic austerity measures by the union's authorities. Decentralisation of political power is a very useful tool for populists to use to their benefit, this is because it allows them to speak more directly to the people of whom they seek to gain attention and votes. Leaders Populism is often associated with charismatic and dominant leaders, and the populist leader is, according to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, "the quintessential form of populist mobilization". These individuals campaign and attract support on the basis of their own personal appeal. Their supporters then develop a perceived personal connection with the leader. For these leaders, populist rhetoric allows them to claim that they have a direct relationship with "the people", and in many cases they claim to be a personification of "the people" themselves, presenting themselves as the vox populi or "voice of the people". Hugo Chávez for instance stated: "I demand absolute loyalty to me. I am not an individual, I am the people." Populist leaders can also present themselves as the saviour of the people because of their perceived unique talents and vision, and in doing so can claim to be making personal sacrifices for the good of the people. Because loyalty to the populist leader is thus seen as representing loyalty to the people, those who oppose the leader can be branded "enemies of the people". The overwhelming majority of populist leaders have been men, although there have been various females occupying this role. Most of these female populist leaders gained positions of seniority through their connections to previously dominant men; Eva Perón was the wife of Juan Perón, Marine Le Pen the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Keiko Fujimori the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, and Yingluck Shinawatra the sister of Thaksin Shinawatra. Rhetorical styles Canovan noted that populists often used "colourful and undiplomatic language" to distinguish themselves from the governing elite. In Africa, several populist leaders have distinguished themselves by speaking in indigenous languages rather than either French or English. Populist leaders often present themselves as people of action rather than people of words, talking of the need for "bold action" and "common sense solutions" to issues which they call "crises". Male populist leaders often express themselves using simple and sometimes vulgar language in an attempt to present themselves as "the common man" or "one of the boys" to add to their populist appeal. An example of this is Umberto Bossi, the leader of the right-wing populist Italian Lega Nord, who at rallies would state "the League has a hard-on" while putting his middle-finger up as a sign of disrespect to the government in Rome. Another recurring feature of male populist leaders is the emphasis that they place on their own virility. An example of this is the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who bragged about his bunga bunga sex parties and his ability to seduce young women. Among female populist leaders, it is more common for them to emphasise their role as a wife and mother. The US right-wing populist Sarah Palin for instance referred to herself as a "hockey mom" and a "mama grizzly", while Australian right-wing populist Pauline Hanson stated that "I care so passionately about this country, it's like I'm its mother. Australia is my home and the Australian people are my children." Populist leaders typically portray themselves as outsiders who are separate from the "elite". Female populist leaders sometimes reference their gender as setting them apart from the dominant "old boys' club", while in Latin America a number of populists, such as Evo Morales and Alberto Fujimori, emphasised their non-white ethnic background to set them apart from the white-dominated elite. Other populists have used clothing to set them apart. In South Africa, the populist Julius Malema and members of his Economic Freedom Fighters attended parliament dressed as miners and workers to distinguish themselves from the other politicians wearing suits. In instances where wealthy business figures promote populist sentiments, such as Ross Perot, Thaksin Shinawatra, or Berlusconi, it can be difficult to present themselves as being outside the elite, however this is achieved by portraying themselves as being apart from the political, if not the economic elite, and portraying themselves as reluctant politicians. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser noted that "in reality, most populist leaders are very much part of the national elite", typically being highly educated, upper-middle class, middle-aged males from the majority ethnicity. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser suggested that "true outsiders" to the political system are rare, although cited instances like Venezuela's Chávez and Peru's Fujimori. More common is that they are "insider-outsiders", strongly connected to the inner circles of government but not having ever been part of it. The Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders had for example been a prominent back-bench MP for many years before launching his populist Party for Freedom, while in South Africa, Malema had been leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC) youth league until he was expelled, at which he launched his own populist movement. Only a few populist leaders are "insiders", individuals who have held leading roles in government prior to portraying themselves as populists. One example is Thaksin Shinawatra, who was twice deputy prime minister of Thailand before launching his own populist political party; another is Rafael Correa, who served as the Ecuadorean finance minister before launching a left-wing populist challenge. Populist leaders are sometimes also characterised as strongmen or—in Latin American countries—as caudillos. In a number of cases, such as Argentina's Perón or Venezuela's Chávez, these leaders have military backgrounds which contribute to their strongman image. Other populist leaders have also evoked the strongman image without having a military background; these include Italy's Berlusconi, Slovakia's Mečiar, and Thailand's Thaksin Shinawatra. Populism and strongmen are not intrinsically connected, however; as stressed by Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, "only a minority of strongmen are populists and only a minority of populists is a strongman". Rather than being populists, many strongmen—such as Spain's Francisco Franco—were elitists who led authoritarian administrations. In most cases, these populist leaders built a political organisation around themselves, typically a political party, although in many instances these remain dominated by the leader. These individuals often give a populist movement its political identity, as is seen with movements like Fortuynism in the Netherlands, Peronism in Argentina, Berlusconism in Italy and Chavismo in Venezuela. Populist mobilisation is not however always linked to a charismatic leadership. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser suggested that populist personalist leadership was more common in countries with a presidential system rather than a parliamentary one because these allow for the election of a single individual to the role of head of government without the need for an accompanying party. Examples where a populist leader has been elected to the presidency without an accompanying political party have included Peron in Argentina, Fujimori in Peru, and Correa in Ecuador. Media A subset of populism which deals with the use of media by politicians is called "media populism". Populist leaders often use the media in order to mobilize their support. In Latin America, there is a long tradition of using mass media as a way for charismatic leaders to directly communicate with the poorly educated masses, first by radio and then by television. The former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had a weekly show called Aló Presidente, which according to historian Enrique Krauze gave some Venezuelans "at least the appearance of contact with power, through his verbal and visual presence, which may be welcomed by people who have spent most of their lives being ignored." The media has also been argued to have helped populists in countries of other regions by giving exposure to the most controversial politicians for commercial reasons. Donald Trump was claimed to have received $5 billion worth of free coverage during his 2016 campaign. Tabloids are often stereotyped as presenting a platform for populist politics due to their tendency toward melodrama, infotainment, and conflict, and thus provide support for populist parties. Examples of this have been the support given by Kronen Zeitung to the Austrian Freedom Party and the Berlusconi-owned presses' support for Italy's National Alliance in the mid-1990s. Based on his analysis of Dutch and British media, Tjitske Akkerman however argued that tabloids were no more prone to populism than the quality press. In the 21st century, populists have increasingly used social media to bypass the mainstream media and directly approach their target audiences. In earlier periods, before radio, thought "mass media" newspapers tended to operate more like social media than modern newspapers, publishing local gossip and with little fact-checking; the expansion of newspapers to rural areas of the United States in the early twentieth century increased support for populist parties and positions. It has been claimed that while traditional media, acting as so-called 'gatekeepers', filter the messages that they broadcast through journalistic norms, social media permits a 'direct linkage' from political actors to potential audiences. It has been claimed that the use of Twitter helped Donald Trump win the US presidency, while the same has been claimed regarding the use of YouTube by the Jair Bolsonaro 2018 presidential campaign. Electoral systems Political systems with low political efficacy or high wasted votes can contribute to populism. Populist leaders have been claimed to be more successful in presidential systems. This is because such systems give advantage to charismatic populist leaders, especially when institutionalized parties are weak. This is especially the case in two-round systems, because outsiders who might not win most votes in the first round of voting might be able to do so when faced against a mainstream candidate in the second round. This has been claimed to be evident in the 1990 Peruvian general election won by Alberto Fujimori, who lost on the first round. Furthermore, Juan José Linz has argued that the direct relationship between the president and the electorate fosters a populist perception of the president as representing the whole people and their opponents as resisting the popular will. Political parties Another form of mobilisation is through populist political parties. Populists are not generally opposed to political representation, but merely want their own representatives, those of "the people", in power. In various cases, non-populist political parties have transitioned into populist ones; the elitist Socialist Unity Party of Germany, a Marxist–Leninist group which governed East Germany, later transitioned after German re-unification into a populist party, The Left. In other instances, such as the Austrian FPÖ and Swiss SVP, a non-populist party can have a populist faction which later takes control of the whole party. In some examples where a political party has been dominated by a single charismatic leader, the latter's death has served to unite and strengthen the party, as with Argentina's Justicialist Party after Juan Perón's death in 1974, or the United Socialist Party of Venezuela after Chávez's death in 2013. In other cases, a populist party has seen one strong centralising leader replace another, as when Marine Le Pen replaced her father Jean-Marie as the leader of the National Front in 2011, or when Heinz-Christian Strache took over from Haider as chair of the Freedom Party of Austria in 2005. Many populist parties achieve an electoral breakthrough but then fail to gain electoral persistence, with their success fading away at subsequent elections. In various cases, they are able to secure regional strongholds of support but with little support elsewhere in the country; the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) for instance gained national representation in the Austrian parliament solely because of its strong support in Carinthia. Similarly, the Belgian Vlaams Belang party has its stronghold in Antwerp, while the Swiss People's Party has its stronghold in Zürich. Social movements An additional form is that of the populist social movement. Populist social movements are comparatively rare, as most social movements focus on a more restricted social identity or issue rather than identifying with "the people" more broadly. However, after the Great Recession of 2007 a number of populist social movements emerged, expressing public frustrations with national and international economic systems. These included the Occupy movement, which originated in the US and used the slogan "We are the 99%", and the Spanish Indignados movement, which employed the motto: "real democracy now—we are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers". Few populist social movements survive for more than a few years, with most examples, like the Occupy movement, petering out after their initial growth. In some cases, the social movement fades away as a strong leader emerges from within it and moves into electoral politics. An example of this can be seen with the India Against Corruption social movement, from which emerged Arvind Kejriwal, who founded the Aam Aadmi Party ("Common Man Party"). Another is the Spanish Indignados movement which appeared in 2011 before spawning the Podemos party led by Pablo Iglesias Turrión. These populist social movements can exert a broader societal impact which results in populist politicians emerging to prominence; the Tea Party and Occupy movements that appeared in the US during the late 2000s and early 2010s have been seen as an influence on the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as prominent figures in the mid-2010s. Some populist leaders have sought to broaden their support by creating supporter groups within the country. Chavez, for instance, ordered the formation of Bolivarian Circles, Communal Councils, Urban Land Committees, and Technical Water Roundtables across Venezuela. These could improve political participation among poorer sectors of Venezuelan society, although also served as networks through which the state transferred resources to those neighbourhoods which produced high rates of support for Chavez government. Other themes Democracy Populism is a flexible term as it can be seen to exist in both democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. There have been intense debates about the relationship between populism and democracy. Some regard populism as being an intrinsic danger to democracy; others regard it as the only "true" form of democracy. Populists often present themselves as "true democrats". It could be argued that populism is democratic as it allows voters to remove governments they do not approve via the ballot box because voting is an essential value for a state to be considered a democracy. Albertazzi and McDonnell stated that populism and democracy were "inextricably linked", the political scientist Manuel Anselmi described populism as being "deeply connected with democracy", and March suggested that populism represented a "critique of democracy, not an alternative to it". Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser write that "In a world that is dominated by democracy and liberalism, populism has essentially become an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism." Adamidis argues that the effect of populism on democracy can be measured by reference to its impact on the democratic legal systems and, in particular, to the changes it effects on their rule of recognition. Populism can serve as a democratic corrective by contributing to the mobilisation of social groups who feel excluded from political decision making. It can also raise awareness among the socio-political elites of popular concerns in society, even if it makes the former uncomfortable. When some populists have taken power—most notably, Chávez in Venezuela—they have enhanced the use of direct democracy through the regular application of referendums. For this reason, some democratic politicians have argued that they need to become more populist: René Cuperus of the Dutch Labour Party for instance called for social democracy to become "more 'populist' in a leftist way" in order to engage with voters who felt left behind by cultural and technological change. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser argued that "populism is essentially democratic, but at odds with democracy," since populism is based on putting into effect "the will of the people". It is therefore majoritarian in nature, and opposed to the safeguarding of minority rights, which is a defining feature of liberal democracy. Populism also undermines the tenets of liberal democracy by rejecting notions of pluralism and the idea that anything, including constitutional limits, should constrain the "general will" of "the people". In this, populist governance can lead to what the liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill described as the "tyranny of the majority". Populists tend to view democratic institutions as alienating, and in practice, populists operating in liberal democracies have often criticised the independent institutions designed to protect the fundamental rights of minorities, particularly the judiciary and the media. Berlusconi for instance criticised the Italian judiciary for defending the rights of communists. In countries like Hungary, Ecuador, and Venezuela, populist governments have curtailed the independent media. Minorities have often suffered as a result. In Europe in particular, ethnic minorities have had their rights undermined by populism, while in Latin America it is political opposition groups who have been undermined by populist governments. In several instances—such as Orban in Hungary—the populist leader has set the country on a path of de-democratisation by changing the constitution to centralise increasing levels of power in the head of government. A December 2018 study of 46 populist leaders argued that populists, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, were more likely to damage democratic institutions, erode checks and balances on the executive branch, cause democratic backsliding and attack individual rights than non-populists. In contrast, an analysis of the V-Party Dataset demonstrates moderate levels of populism are not necessarily antidemocratic, only high levels of populism are related to higher autocratization. Even when not elected into office, populist parties can have an impact in shaping the national political agenda; in Western Europe, parties like the French National Front and Danish People's Party did not generally get more than 10 or 20% of the national vote, but mainstream parties shifted their own policies to meet the populist challenge. Mainstream responses Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser suggested that to deflate the appeal of populism, those government figures found guilty of corruption need to be seen to face adequate punishment. They also argued that stronger rule of law and the elimination of systemic corruption were also important facets in preventing populist growth. They believed that mainstream politicians wishing to reduce the populist challenge should be more open about the restrictions of their power, noting that those who backed populist movements were often frustrated with the dishonesty of established politicians who "claim full agency when things go well and almost full lack of agency when things go wrong". They also suggested that the appeal of populism could be reduced by wider civic education in the values of liberal democracy and the relevance of pluralism. What Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser believed was ineffective was a full-frontal attack on the populists which presented "them" as "evil" or "foolish", for this strategy plays into the binary division that populists themselves employ. In their view, "the best way to deal with populism is to engage—as difficult as it is—in an open dialogue with populist actors and supporters" in order to "better understand the claims and grievances of the populist elites and masses and to develop liberal democratic responses to them". Mainstream politicians have sometimes sought to co-operate or build alliances with populists. In the United States, for example, various Republican Party figures aligned themselves with the Tea Party movement, while in countries such as Finland and Austria populist parties have taken part in governing coalitions. In other instances, mainstream politicians have adopted elements of a populist political style while competing against populist opponents. Various mainstream centrist figures, such as Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair, have argued that governments needed to restrict migration to hinder the appeal of right-wing populists utilising anti-immigrant sentiment in elections. A more common approach has been for mainstream parties to openly attack the populists and construct a cordon sanitaire to prevent them from gaining political office Once populists are in political office in liberal democracies, the judiciary can play a key role in blocking some of their more illiberal policies, as has been the case in Slovakia and Poland. The mainstream media can play an important role in blocking populist growth; in a country like Germany, the mainstream media is for instant resolutely anti-populist, opposing populist groups whether left or right. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser noted that there was an "odd love-hate relationship between populist media and politicians, sharing a discourse but not a struggle". In certain countries, certain mainstream media outlets have supported populist groups; in Austria, the Kronen Zeitung played a prominent role in endorsing Haider, in the United Kingdom the Daily Express supported the UK Independence Party, while in the United States, Fox News gave much positive coverage and encouragement to the Tea Party movement. In some cases, when the populists have taken power, their political rivals have sought to violently overthrow them; this was seen in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, when mainstream groups worked with sectors of the military to unseat Hugo Chávez's government. Another discursive strategy of mainstream parties dealing with populist actors is demonization. However, Schwörer and Fernández-García found that this practice is less common in Western Europe as usually assumed and that the center-right even refuses to harshly attack the populist radical right. In a similar vein, mainstream parties use the term "populism" to delegitimize populist actors due to its negative connotation among the public but also use the term to attack non-populist competitors. Authoritarianism Scholars have argued that populist elements have sometimes appeared in authoritarian movements. Some, but not all, populists are authoritarian, emphasizing "the importance of protecting traditional lifestyles against perceived threats from 'outsiders', even at the expense of civil liberties and minority rights." The historian Roger Eatwell noted that "major ideological differences ... lie at the core" of fascism and populism, the former being anti-democratic and latter being rooted in democracy, "albeit not liberal democracy". However, he says that fascist politicians have "borrowed aspects of populist discourse and style". Some fascists have for instance used the terms "people" and "nation" synonymously. The historian Peter Fritzsche argued that populist movements active in Weimar Germany helped to facilitate the environment in which the fascist Nazi Party could rise to power, and that the Nazis utilised, "at least rhetorically", the "populist ideal of the people's community". The scholar Luke March argued that the populist Narodnik movement of late 19th-century Russia influenced the radical rejection on the constitutional limits of the state found in Marxism–Leninism. Although the Marxist–Leninist movement often used populist rhetoric—in the 1960s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union called itself the "party of the Soviet people"—in practice its emphasis on an elite vanguard is anti-populist in basis. In recent history, a 2018 analysis by political scientists Yascha Mounk and Jordan Kyle links populism to democratic backsliding, showing that since 1990, five out of 13 elected right-wing populist governments and five out of 15 elected left-wing populist governments brought about significant democratic backsliding. From the left, the pink tide spreading over Latin America was "prone to populism and authoritarianism". Correa in Ecuador and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and his regional allies used populism to achieve their dominance and later established authoritarian regimes when they were empowered. Such actions, Weyland argues, proves that populism is a strategy for winning and exerting state power and stands in tension with democracy and the values of pluralism, open debate, and fair competition. In 2019, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart classified over 50 European political parties as 'authoritarian-populist' as well as world leaders like Donald Trump, Silvio Burlesconi, Viktor Orbán, Hugo Chávez, Nicholas Maduro, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, and Rodrigo Duterte. They described the combination of authoritarian values disguised in populist rhetoric as perhaps the most dangerous threat to liberal democracy. They also argue that authoritarian-populism provides a more powerful analytical lens than conventional labels like right-wing populism. History Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser argue that populism is a modern phenomenon. However, attempts have been made to identify manifestations of populism in the democracy of classical Athens. Eatwell noted that although the actual term populism parallels that of the Populares who were active in the Roman Republic, these and other pre-modern groups "did not develop a truly populist ideology." The origins of populism are often traced to the late nineteenth century, when movements calling themselves populist arose in both the United States and the Russian Empire. Populism has often been linked to the spread of democracy, both as an idea and as a framework for governance. Conversely, the historian Barry S. Strauss argued that populism could also be seen in the ancient world, citing the examples of the fifth-century B.C. Athens and Populares, a political faction active in the Roman Republic from the second century BCE. The historian Rachel Foxley argued that the Levellers of 17th-century England could also be labelled "populists", meaning that they believed "equal natural rights ... must shape political life" while the historian Peter Blickle linked populism to the Protestant Reformation. Europe 19th and 20th centuries In the Russian Empire during the late 19th century, the narodnichestvo movement emerged, championing the cause of the empire's peasantry against the governing elites. The movement was unable to secure its objectives; however, it inspired other agrarian movements across eastern Europe in the early 20th century. Although the Russian movement was primarily a movement of the middle class and intellectuals "going to the people", in some respects their agrarian populism was similar to that of the US People's Party, with both presenting small farmers (the peasantry in Europe) as the foundation of society and main source of societal morality. According to Eatwell, the narodniks "are often seen as the first populist movement". In German-speaking Europe, the völkisch movement has often been characterised as populist, with its exultation of the German people and its anti-elitist attacks on capitalism and Jews. In France, the Boulangist movement also utilised populist rhetoric and themes. In the early 20th century, adherents of both Marxism and fascism flirted with populism, but both movements remained ultimately elitist, emphasising the idea of a small elite who should guide and govern society. Among Marxists, the emphasis on class struggle and the idea that the working classes are affected by false consciousness are also antithetical to populist ideas. After 1945 populism was largely absent from Europe, in part due to the domination of Marxism–Leninism in Eastern Europe and a desire to emphasise moderation among many West European political parties. However, over the coming decades, a number of right-wing populist parties emerged throughout the continent. These were largely isolated and mostly reflected a conservative agricultural backlash against the centralisation and politicisation of the agricultural sector then occurring. These included Guglielmo Giannini's Common Man's Front in 1940s Italy, Pierre Poujade's Union for the Defense of Tradesmen and Artisans in late 1950s France, Hendrik Koekoek's Farmers' Party of the 1960s Netherlands, and Mogens Glistrup's Progress Party of 1970s Denmark. Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s there also came a concerted populist critique of society from Europe's New Left, including from the new social movements and from the early Green parties. However it was only in the late 1990s, according to Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, that populism became "a relevant political force in Europe", one which could have a significant impact on mainstream politics. Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc of the early 1990s, there was a rise in populism across much of Central and Eastern Europe. In the first multiparty elections in many of these countries, various parties portrayed themselves as representatives of "the people" against the "elite", representing the old governing Marxist–Leninist parties. The Czech Civic Forum party for instance campaigned on the slogan "Parties are for party members, Civic Forum is for everybody". Many populists in this region claimed that a "real" revolution had not occurred during the transition from Marxist–Leninist to liberal democratic governance in the early 1990s and that it was they who were campaigning for such a change. The collapse of Marxism–Leninism as a central force in socialist politics also led to a broader growth of left-wing populism across Europe, reflected in groups like the Dutch Socialist Party, Scottish Socialist Party, and German's The Left party. Since the late 1980s, populist experiences emerged in Spain around the figures of José María Ruiz Mateos, Jesús Gil and Mario Conde, businessmen who entered politics chiefly to defend their personal economic interests, but by the turn of the millennium their proposals had proved to meet a limited support at the ballots at the national level. 21st century At the turn of the 21st century, populist rhetoric and movements became increasingly apparent in Western Europe. Populist rhetoric was often used by opposition parties. For example, in the 2001 electoral campaign, the Conservative Party leader William Hague accused Tony Blair's governing Labour Party government of representing "the condescending liberal elite". Hague repeatedly referring to it as "metropolitan", implying that it was out of touch with "the people", who in Conservative discourse are represented by "Middle England". Blair's government also employed populist rhetoric; in outlining legislation to curtail fox hunting on animal welfare grounds, it presented itself as championing the desires of the majority against the upper-classes who engaged in the sport. Blair's rhetoric has been characterised as the adoption of a populist style rather than the expression of an underlying populist ideology. By the 21st century, European populism was again associated largely with the political right. The term came to be used in reference both to radical right groups like Jörg Haider's FPÖ in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen's FN in France, as well as to non-radical right-wing groups like Silvio Berlusconi's or Pim Fortuyn's LPF in the Netherlands. The populist radical right combined populism with authoritarianism and nativism. Conversely, the Great Recession also resulted in the emergence of left-wing populist groups in parts of Europe, most notably the Syriza party which gained political office in Greece and the Podemos party in Spain, displaying similarities with the US-based Occupy movement. Like Europe's right-wing populists, these groups also expressed Eurosceptic sentiment towards the European Union, albeit largely from a socialist and anti-austerity perspective rather than the nationalist perspective adopted by their right-wing counterparts. Populists have entered government in many countries across Europe, both in coalitions with other parties as well by themselves, Austria and Poland are examples of these respectively. The UK Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn has been called populist, with the slogan "for the many not the few" having been used. After the 2016 UK referendum on membership of the European Union, in which British citizens voted to leave, some have claimed the "Brexit" as a victory for populism, encouraging a flurry of calls for referendums among other EU countries by populist political parties. North America In North America, populism has often been characterised by regional mobilisation and loose organisation. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, populist sentiments became widespread, particularly in the western provinces of Canada, and in the southwest and Great Plains regions of the United States. In this instance, populism was combined with agrarianism and often known as "prairie populism". For these groups, "the people" were yeomen—small, independent farmers —while the "elite" were the bankers and politicians of the northeast. In some cases, populist activists called for alliances with labor (the first national platform of the National People's Party in 1892 calling for protecting the rights of "urban workmen". In the state of Georgia in the early 1890s, Thomas E. Watson led a major effort to unite poor white farmers, and included some African-American farmers. The People's Party of the late 19th century United States is considered to be "one of the defining populist movements"; its members were often referred to as the Populists at the time. Its radical platform included calling for the nationalisation of railways, the banning of strikebreakers, and the introduction of referendums. The party gained representation in several state legislatures during the 1890s, but was not powerful enough to mount a successful presidential challenge. In the 1896 presidential election, the People's Party supported the Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan; after his defeat, the People's Party's support plunged. Other early populist political parties in the United States included the Greenback Party, the Progressive Party of 1924 led by Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and the Share Our Wealth movement of Huey P. Long in 1933–1935. In Canada, populist groups adhering to a social credit ideology had various successes at local and regional elections from the 1930s to the 1960s, although the main Social Credit Party of Canada never became a dominant national force. By the mid-20th century, US populism had moved from a largely progressive to a largely reactionary stance, being closely intertwined with the anti-communist politics of the period. In this period, the historian Richard Hofstadter and sociologist Daniel Bell compared the anti-elitism of the 1890s Populists with that of Joseph McCarthy. Although not all academics accepted the comparison between the left-wing, anti-big business Populists and the right-wing, anti-communist McCarthyites, the term "populist" nonetheless came to be applied to both left-wing and right-wing groups that blamed elites for the problems facing the country. Some mainstream politicians in the Republican Party recognised the utility of such a tactic and adopted it; Republican President Richard Nixon for instance popularised the term "silent majority" when appealing to voters. Right-wing populist rhetoric was also at the base of two of the most successful third-party presidential campaigns in the late 20th century, that of George C. Wallace in 1968 and Ross Perot in 1992. These politicians presented a consistent message that a "liberal elite" was threatening "our way of life" and using the welfare state to placate the poor and thus maintain their own power. Former Oklahoma Senator Fred R. Harris, first elected in 1964, ran unsuccessfully for the US presidency in 1972 and 1976. Harris' New Populism embraced egalitarian themes. In the first decade of the 21st century, two populist movements appeared in the US, both in response to the Great Recession: the Occupy movement and the Tea Party movement. The populist approach of the Occupy movement was broader, with its "people" being what it called "the 99%", while the "elite" it challenged was presented as both the economic and political elites. The Tea Party's populism was Producerism, while "the elite" it presented was more party partisan than that of Occupy, being defined largely—although not exclusively—as the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama. The 2016 presidential election saw a wave of populist sentiment in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, with both candidates running on anti-establishment platforms in the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Both campaigns criticised free trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Other studies have noted an emergence of populist rhetoric and a decline in the value of prior experience in U.S. intra-party contests such as congressional primaries. Nativism and hostility toward immigrants (especially Muslims, Hispanics and Asians) were common features. Latin America Populism has been dominant in Latin American politics since the 1930s and 1940s, being far more prevalent there than in Europe. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser noted that the region has the world's "most enduring and prevalent populist tradition". They suggested that this was the case because it was a region with a long tradition of democratic governance and free elections, but with high rates of socio-economic inequality, generating widespread resentments that politicians can articulate through populism. March instead thought that it was the important role of "catch-all parties and prominent personalities" in Latin American politics which had made populism more common. The first wave of Latin American populism began at the start of the Great Depression in 1929 and last until the end of the 1960s. In various countries, politicians took power while emphasising "the people": these included Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Perón in Argentina, and José María Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador. These relied on the Americanismo ideology, presenting a common identity across Latin America and denouncing any interference from imperialist powers. The second wave took place in the early 1990s; de la Torre called it "neoliberal populism". In the late 1980s, many Latin American states were experiencing economic crisis and several populist figures were elected by blaming the elites for this situation. Examples include Carlos Menem in Argentina, Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil, and Alberto Fujimori in Peru. Once in power, these individuals pursued neoliberal economic strategies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unlike the first wave, the second did not include an emphasis on Americanismo or anti-imperialism. The third wave began in the final years of the 1990s and continued into the 21st century. It overlapped in part with the pink tide of left-wing resurgence in Latin America. Like the first wave, the third made heavy use of Americanismo and anti-imperialism, although this time these themes presented alongside an explicitly socialist programme that opposed the free market. Prominent examples included Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Cristina de Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. These socialist populist governments have presented themselves as giving sovereignty "back to the people", in particular through the formation of constituent assemblies that would draw up new constitutions, which could then be ratified via referendums. In this way they claimed to be correcting the problems of social and economic injustice that liberal democracy had failed to deal with, replacing it with superior forms of democracy. Oceania During the 1990s, there was a growth in populism in both Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand, Robert Muldoon, the 31st Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1975 to 1984, had been cited as a populist. Populism has become a pervasive trend in New Zealand politics since the introduction of the mixed-member proportional voting system in 1996. The New Zealand Labour Party's populist appeals in its 1999 election campaign and advertising helped to propel the party to victory in that election. New Zealand First has presented a more lasting populist platform; long-time party leader Winston Peters has been characterised by some as a populist who uses anti-establishment rhetoric, though in a uniquely New Zealand style. Sub-Saharan Africa In much of Africa, populism has been a rare phenomenon. The political scientist Danielle Resnick argued that populism first became apparent in Africa during the 1980s, when a series of coups brought military leaders to power in various countries. In Ghana, for example, Jerry Rawlings took control, professing that he would involve "the people" in "the decision-making process", something he claimed had previously been denied to them. A similar process took place in neighbouring Burkina Faso under the military leader Thomas Sankara, who professed to "take power out of the hands of our national bourgeoisie and their imperialist allies and put it in the hands of the people". Such military leaders claimed to represent "the voice of the people", utilised an anti-establishment discourse, and established participatory organisations through which to maintain links with the broader population. In the 21st century, with the establishment of multi-party democratic systems in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, new populist politicians have appeared. These have included Kenya's Raila Odinga, Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade, South Africa's Julius Malema, and Zambia's Michael Sata. These populists have arisen in democratic rather than authoritarian states, and have arisen amid dissatisfaction with democratisation, socio-economic grievances, and frustration at the inability of opposition groups to oust incumbent parties. Asia and the Arab world In North Africa, populism was associated with the approaches of several political leaders active in the 20th century, most notably Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. However, populist approaches only became more popular in the Middle East during the early 21st century, by which point it became integral to much of the region's politics. Here, it became an increasingly common element of mainstream politics in established representative democracies, associated with longstanding leaders like Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Although the Arab Spring was not a populist movement itself, populist rhetoric was present among protesters. In southeast Asia, populist politicians emerged in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In the region, various populist governments took power but were removed soon after: these include the administrations of Joseph Estrada in the Philippines, Roh Moo-hyun in South Korea, Chen Shui-bian in Taiwan, and Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand. In India, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which rose to increasing power in the early 21st century adopted a right-wing populist position. Unlike many other successful populist groups, the BJP was not wholly reliant on the personality of its leader, but survived as a powerful electoral vehicle under several leaders. Late 20th- and early 21st-century growth Sheri Berman reviews various explanations of populism including "demand- and supply-side explanations of populism, economic grievance–based and sociocultural grievance–based explanations of populism, and structure- and agency-based explanations of populism". There is now a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary literature in this area. In the early 1990s, there was an increasing awareness of populism in established liberal democracies, sometimes referred to as the "New Populism". The UK's referendum on European Union membership and the election of Donald Trump, both in 2016, generated a substantial rise in interest in the concept from both academics and the public. By 2016, "populism" was regularly used by political commentators. A 2017 review of votes for populistic parties in all developed countries discovered them spiking in 2015 and reaching highest levels since WWII. Mudde argued that by the early 1990s, populism had become a regular feature in Western democracies. He attributed this to changing perceptions of government that had spread in this period, which in turn he traced to the changing role of the media to focus increasingly on sensationalism and scandals. Since the late 1960s, the emergence of television had allowed for the increasing proliferation of the Western media, with media outlets becoming increasingly independent of political parties. As private media companies have had to compete against each other, they have placed an increasing focus on scandals and other sensationalist elements of politics, in doing so promoting anti-governmental sentiments among their readership and cultivating an environment prime for populists. At the same time, politicians increasingly faced television interviews, exposing their flaws. News media had also taken to interviewing fewer accredited experts, and instead favouring interviewing individuals found on the street as to their views about current events. At the same time, mass media was giving less attention to the "high culture" of elites and more to other sectors of society, as reflected in reality television shows such as Big Brother. Mudde argued that another reason for the growth of Western populism in this period was the improved education of the populace; since the 1960s, citizens have expected more from their politicians and felt increasingly competent to judge their actions. This in turn has led to an increasingly sceptical attitude toward mainstream politicians and governing groups. In Mudde's words, "More and more citizens think they have a good understanding of what politicians do, and think they can do it better." Another factor is that in the post-Cold War period, liberal democracies no longer had the one-party states of the Eastern Bloc against which to favourably compare themselves; citizens were therefore increasingly able to compare the realities of the liberal democratic system with theoretical models of democracy, and find the former wanting. There is also the impact of globalisation, which is seen as having seriously limited the powers of national elites. Such factors undermine citizens' belief in the competency of governing elite, opening up space for charismatic leadership to become increasingly popular; although charismatic leadership is not the same as populist leadership, populists have been the main winners of this shift towards charismatic leadership. Peter Wilkins has argued that "The end of history and the post-Cold War extension and deepening of capitalism are central to understanding the rise of contemporary populist movements." Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart connect economic and sociocultural theories of the causes of support for the growing populist movements in Western societies. The first theory they examine is the economic insecurity perspective which focuses on the consequences created by a transforming contemporary workforce and society in post-industrial economies. Norris suggests that events such as globalisation, China's membership of the World Trade Organisation and cheaper imports have left the unsecured members of society (low-waged unskilled workers, single parents, the long term unemployed and the poorer white populations) seeking populist leaders such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. The other theory is the cultural backlash thesis, in which Norris and Inglehart suggest that the rise of populism is a reaction from previously dominant sectors of the population, the white, uneducated, elderly men of today, who feel threatened and marginalised by the progressive values of modern society. These groups in particular have a growing resentment towards their traditional values being scolded as politically incorrect and are much more likely to become supportive of anti-establishment, xenophobic political parties. Norris and Inglehart have analyzed data from the World Values Survey. On this basis, they argue that while the proximate cause of right-wing populist voting may be identified in sociocultural grievances, such grievances are increasingly being driven by economic insecurity and the erosion of traditional values. Using Brexit and Trump's election as examples, Michael Sandel in his 2020 book The Tyranny of Merit argues that populism came out of disenchantment with 'meritocratic' elites ruling over disenchanted working people. He states the popular backlash against meritocracy predicted by Michael Dunlop Young in The Rise of the Meritocracy to occur in the 2030s in fact arrived a few decades early. Sandel suggests political systems that reject meritocracy and champion the dignity of labour as the solution to this problem. See also Labourism Anti-elitism Argumentum ad populum Black populism Class warfare Communitarianism Demagogue Empire of Democracy Extremism Fanaticism Fundamentalism List of populists Judicial populism Ochlocracy (mob rule) Paternalism Penal populism Politainment Political polarization Poporanism Populism in Latin America Radical politics Reactionism Third party (politics) Tyranny of the majority References Notes Bibliography Adamidis, Vasileios (2019), Manifestations of populism in late 5th century Athens. In: D.A. FRENKEL and N. VARGA, eds., New studies in law and history. Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research, pp. 11–28. . 1 Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. "Studying populism in comparative perspective: Reflections on the contemporary and future research agenda." Comparative political studies 51.13 (2018): 1667–1693. online Further reading General Abromeit, John et al., eds. Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and Recent Tendencies (Bloomsbury, 2015). xxxii, 354 pp. Adamidis, Vasileios (2021), Populist Rhetorical Strategies in the Courts of classical Athens. Athens Journal of History 7(1): 21–40. Albertazzi, Daniele and Duncan McDonnell. 2008. Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Berlet, Chip. 2005. "When Alienation Turns Right: Populist Conspiracism, the Apocalyptic Style, and Neofascist Movements". In Lauren Langman & Devorah Kalekin Fishman, (eds.), Trauma, Promise, and the Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Boyte, Harry C. 2004. Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Brass, Tom. 2000. Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism: The Return of the Agrarian Myth. London: Frank Cass Publishers. Bevernage, Berber et al., eds. Claiming the People's Past: Populist Politics of History in the Twenty-First Century. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2024. Caiani, Manuela. "Populism/Populist Movements". in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (2013). Coles, Rom. 2006. "Of Tensions and Tricksters: Grassroots Democracy Between Theory and Practice", Perspectives on Politics Vol. 4:3 (Fall), pp. 547–61 Denning, Michael. 1997. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London: Verso. Emibayer, Mustafa and Ann Mishe. 1998. "What is Agency?", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 103:4, pp. 962–1023 Foster, John Bellamy. "This Is Not Populism " (June 2017), Monthly Review Goodwyn, Lawrence, 1976, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. New York: Oxford University Press Hogg, Michael A., "Radical Change: Uncertainty in the world threatens our sense of self. To cope, people embrace populism", Scientific American, vol. 321, no. 3 (September 2019), pp. 85–87. Kazin, Michael. "Trump and American Populism". Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 2016), 95#6 pp. 17–24. Khoros, Vladimir. 1984. Populism: Its Past, Present and Future. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Kling, Joseph M. and Prudence S. Posner. 1990. Dilemmas of Activism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kuzminski, Adrian. Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient & Modern. New York: Continuum Books, 2008. Laclau, Ernesto. 1977. Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Fascism, Populism. London: NLB/Atlantic Highlands Humanities Press. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On Populist Reason . London: Verso McCoy, Alfred W (2 April 2017). The Bloodstained Rise of Global Populism: A Political Movement’s Violent Pursuit of "Enemies" , TomDispatch Morelock, Jeremiah ed. Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism . 2018. London: University of Westminster Press. Müller, Jan-Werner. What is Populism? (August 2016), Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. Also by Müller on populism: Capitalism in One Family (December 2016), London Review of Books, Vol. 38, No. 23, pp. 10–14 Peters, B. Guy and Jon Pierre. 2020. "A typology of populism: understanding the different forms of populism and their implications." Democratization. Rupert, Mark. 1997. "Globalization and the Reconstruction of Common Sense in the US". In Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, S. Gill and J. Mittelman, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Europe Anselmi, Manuel, 2017. Populism. An Introduction, London: Routledge. Betz, Hans-Georg. 1994. Radical Right-wing Populism in Western Europe, New York: St. Martins Press. Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. De Blasio, Emiliana, Hibberd, Matthew and Sorice, Michele. 2011. Popular politics, populism and the leaders. Access without participation? The cases of Italy and UK. Roma: CMCS-LUISS University. Fritzsche, Peter. 1998. Germans into Nazis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Hartleb, Florian 2011: After their establishment: Right-wing Populist Parties in Europe, Centre for European Studies/Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Brüssel, (download: ) Kriesi, H. (2014), The Populist Challenge, West European Politics, vol. 37, n. 2, pp. 361–378. Mudde, Cas. "The populist radical right: A pathological normalcy." West European Politics 33.6 (2010): 1167–1186. online Wodak, Ruth, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral. "Right-wing populism in Europe". Politics and discourse (2013). online Latin America Conniff, Michael L., ed. Populism in Latin America (1999) essays by experts Demmers, Jolle, et al eds. Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin American Populism (2001) Knight, Alan. "Populism and neo-populism in Latin America, especially Mexico." Journal of Latin American Studies 30.2 (1998): 223–248. Stropparo, P. E. (2023). Pueblo desnudo y público movilizado por el poder: Vacancia del Defensor del Pueblo: algunas transformaciones en la democracia y en la opinión pública en Argentina . Revista Mexicana De Opinión Pública, (35). https://doi.org/10.22201/fcpys.24484911e.2023.35.85516 United States Abromeit, John. "Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian Populism in the United States" In Morelock, Jeremiah Ed. Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism. 2018. London: University of Westminster Press. Agarwal, Sheetal D., et al. "Grassroots organizing in the digital age: considering values and technology in Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street". Information, Communication & Society (2014) 17#3 pp. 326–41. Evans, Sara M. and Harry C. Boyte. 1986. Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America. New York: Harper & Row. Goodwyn, Lawrence. 1976. Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. New York and London: Oxford University Press.; abridged as The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America. (Oxford University Press, 1978) Hahn, Steven. 1983. Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890. New York and London: Oxford University Press, Hofstadter, Richard. 1955. The Age of Reform: from Bryan to F.D.R. New York: Knopf. Hofstadter, Richard. 1965. The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays. New York: Knopf. Jeffrey, Julie Roy. 1975. "Women in the Southern Farmers Alliance: A Reconsideration of the Role and Status of Women in the Late 19th Century South". Feminist Studies 3. Judis, John B. 2016. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. New York: Columbia Global Reports. Kazin, Michael. 1995. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. New York: Basic Books. ; 200+ articles in 901 pp Lipset, Seymour Martin. "The radical right: A problem for American democracy." British Journal of Sociology 6.2 (1955): 176–209. online Maier, Chris. "The Farmers' Fight for Representation: Third-Party Politics in South Dakota, 1889–1918". Great Plains Quarterly (2014) 34#2 pp. 143–62. Marable, Manning. 1986. "Black History and the Vision of Democracy", in Harry Boyte and Frank Riessman, Eds., The New Populism: The Politics of Empowerment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Palmer, Bruce. 1980. Man Over Money: The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Rasmussen, Scott, and Doug Schoen. (2010) Mad as hell: How the Tea Party movement is fundamentally remaking our two-party system (HarperCollins, 2010) Stock, Catherine McNicol. 1996. Rural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain''. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. External links The PopuList: a database of populist, far-left, and far-right parties in Europe since 1989 Comparative politics Political ideologies Political terminology Political theories

Position paper

A position paper (sometimes position piece for brief items) is an essay that presents an arguable opinion about an issue – typically that of the author or some specified entity. Position papers are published in academia, in politics, in law and other domains. The goal of a position paper is to convince the audience that the opinion presented is valid and worth listening to. Ideas for position papers that one is considering need to be carefully examined when choosing a topic, developing an argument, and organizing the paper. Position papers range from the simplest format of a letter to the editor, through to the most complex in the form of an academic position paper. Position papers are also used by large organizations to make public the official beliefs and recommendations of the group. Academia Position papers in academia enable discussion on emerging topics without the experimentation and original research normally present in an academic paper. Commonly, such a document will substantiate the opinions or positions put forward with evidences from an extensive objective discussion of the topic. Politics A position paper lies somewhere on a spectrum between a green paper and a white paper because it affirms opinions and proposes solutions without specifying exactly how they should be implemented. Position papers can lead to a deep understanding of the views of another person or organization which is why they are commonly used by political campaigns, government organizations, in the diplomatic world, and in efforts to change values (e.g. through public service announcements) and organisational branding. They are used in the government of the European Union. They are an important part of the Model United Nations process. Law In international law, the term for a position paper is an aide-mémoire, a memorandum setting forth the minor points of a proposed discussion or disagreement, used especially in undiplomatic communications. Notes References External links Political communication Technical communication

Citizen journalism

Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon members of the community playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. Courtney C. Radsch defines citizen journalism "as an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, that uses similar journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism". Jay Rosen offers a simpler definition: "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another." The underlying principle of citizen journalism is that ordinary people, not professional journalists, can be the main creators and distributors of news. Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, both of which are practiced by professional journalists; collaborative journalism, which is the practice of professional and non-professional journalists working together; and social journalism, which denotes a digital publication with a hybrid of professional and non-professional journalism. Citizen journalism is a specific form of both citizen media and user-generated content (UGC). By juxtaposing the term "citizen", with its attendant qualities of civic-mindedness and social responsibility, with that of "journalism", which refers to a particular profession, Courtney C. Radsch argues that this term best describes this particular form of online and digital journalism conducted by amateurs because it underscores the link between the practice of journalism and its relation to the political and public sphere. Citizen journalism was made more feasible by the development of various online internet platforms. New media technology, such as social networking and media-sharing websites, in addition to the increasing prevalence of cellular telephones, have made citizen journalism more accessible to people worldwide. Recent advances in new media have started to have a profound political impact. Due to the availability of technology, citizens often can report breaking news more quickly than traditional media reporters. Notable examples of citizen journalism reporting from major world events are, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the 2013 protests in Turkey, the Euromaidan events in Ukraine, and Syrian Civil War, the 2014 Ferguson unrest and the Black Lives Matter movement. Being that citizen journalism is yet to develop a conceptual framework and guiding principles, it can be heavily opinionated and subjective, making it more supplemental than primary in terms of forming public opinion. Critics of the phenomenon, including professional journalists and news organizations, claim that citizen journalism is unregulated, amateur, and haphazard in quality and coverage. Furthermore, citizen journalists, due to their lack of professional affiliation, are thought to lack resources as well as focus on how best to serve the public. A research team of citizen journalists created an OER library that contains video interviews to provide access to reliable sources. Theory Citizen journalism, as a form of alternative media, presents a "radical challenge to the professionalized and institutionalized practices of the mainstream media". According to Flew, there have been three elements critical to the rise of citizen journalism: open publishing, collaborative editing, and distributed content. Mark Glaser said in 2006: …people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. In What is Participatory Journalism? (2003), J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types: Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photographs or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community) Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report) Full-fledged participatory news sites (one:convo, NowPublic, OhmyNews, DigitalJournal.com, GroundReport, 'Fair Observer') Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Newsvine) Other kinds of "thin media" (mailing lists, email newsletters) Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as KenRadio) Open source news platforms (such as Veiwapp and Wikinews) The literature of citizen, alternative, and participatory journalism is most often situated in a democratic context and theorized as a response to corporate news media dominated by an economic logic. Some scholars have sought to extend the study of citizen journalism beyond the developed Western world, including Sylvia Moretzsohn, Courtney C. Radsch, and Clemencia Rodríguez. Radsch, for example, wrote that "Throughout the Arab world, citizen journalists have emerged as the vanguard of new social movements dedicated to promoting human rights and democratic values." Theories of citizenship According to Vincent Campbell, theories of citizenship can be categorized into two core groups: those that consider journalism for citizenship, and those that consider journalism as citizenship. The classical model of citizenship is the base of the two theories of citizenship. The classical model is rooted in the ideology of informed citizens and places emphasis on the role of journalists rather than on citizens. The classical model has four main characteristics: journalists' role of informing citizens citizens are assumed to be informed if they regularly attend to the news they are supplied with more informed citizens are more likely to participate the more informed citizens participate, the more democratic a state is more likely to be. The first characteristic upholds the theory that journalism is for citizens. One of the main issues with this is that there is a normative judgement surrounding the amount and nature of information that citizens should have as well as what the relationship between the two should be. One branch of journalism for citizens is the "monitorial citizen" (coined by Michael Schudson). The "monitorial citizen" suggests that citizens appropriately and strategically select what news and information they consume. The "monitorial citizen" along with other forms of this ideology conceive individuals as those who do things with information to enact change and citizenship. However, this production of information does not equal to an act of citizenship, but instead an act of journalism. Therefore, citizens and journalists are portrayed as distinctive roles whereas journalism is used by citizens for citizenship and conversely, journalists serve citizens. The second theory considers journalism as citizenship. This theory focuses on the different aspects of citizen identity and activity and understands citizen journalism as directly constituting citizenship. The term "liquid citizenship" (coined by Zizi Papacharissi) depicts how the lifestyles that individuals engage in allow them to interact with other individuals and organizations, which thus remaps the conceptual periphery of civic, political, and social. This "liquid citizenship" allows the interactions and experiences that individuals face to become citizen journalism where they create their own forms of journalism. An alternative approach of journalism as citizenship rests between the distinction between "dutiful" citizens and "actualizing" citizens. "Dutiful" citizens engage in traditional citizenship practices, while "actualizing" citizens engage in non-traditional citizenship practices. This alternative approach suggests that "actualizing" citizens are less likely to use traditional media and more likely to use online and social media as sources of information, discussion, and participation. Thus, journalism in the form of online and social media practices become a form of citizenship for actualizing citizens. Criticisms have been made against citizen journalism, especially from among professionals in the field. Citizen journalists are often portrayed as unreliable, biased and untrained as opposed to professionals who have "recognition, paid work, unionized labour and behaviour that is often politically neutral and unaffiliated, at least in the claim if not in the actuality". History The idea that every citizen can engage in acts of journalism has a long history in the United States. "As early as the 1920s, journalist and political commentator Walter Lippman and American philosopher John Dewey debated the role of journalism in democracy, including the extent that the public should participate in the news-gathering and production processes." The contemporary citizen journalist movement emerged after journalists began to question the predictability of their coverage of events such as the 1988 U.S. presidential election. Those journalists became part of the public, or civic, journalism movement, which sought to counter the erosion of trust in the news media and the widespread disillusionment with politics and civic affairs. Initially, discussions of public journalism focused on promoting journalism that was "for the people" by changing the way professional reporters did their work. According to Leonard Witt, however, early public journalism efforts were "often part of 'special projects' that were expensive, time-consuming, and episodic. Too often these projects dealt with an issue and moved on. Professional journalists were driving the discussion. They would have the goal of doing a story on welfare-to-work (or the environment, or traffic problems, or the economy), and then they would recruit a cross-section of citizens and chronicle their points of view. Since not all reporters and editors bought into this form of public journalism, and some outright opposed it, reaching out to the people from the newsroom was never an easy task." By 2003, in fact, the movement seemed to be petering out, with the Pew Center for Civic Journalism closing its doors. Traditionally, the term "citizen journalism" has had a history of struggle with deliberating on a concise and mutually agreed upon definition. Even today, the term lacks a clear form of conceptualization. Although the term lacks conceptualization, alternative names of the term are unable to comprehensively capture the phenomenon. For example, one of the interchangeable names with "citizen journalism" is "user-generated content" (UGC). However, the issue with this alternative term is that it eliminates the potential civic virtues of citizen journalism and considers it to be stunted and proprietorial. With today's technology the citizen journalist movement has found new life as the average person can capture news and distribute it globally. As Yochai Benkler has noted, "the capacity to make meaning to encode and decode humanly meaningful statements and the capacity to communicate one's meaning around the world, are held by, or readily available to, at least many hundreds of millions of users around the globe." Professor Mary-Rose Papandrea, a constitutional law professor at UNC School of Law, notes in her article, "Citizen Journalism and the Reporter's Privilege", that: "[i]n many ways, the definition of "journalism" has now come full circle. When the First Amendment was adopted, "freedom of the press" referred quite literally to the freedom to publish using a printing press, rather than the freedom of organized entities engaged in the publishing business. … It was not until the late nineteenth century that the concept of the "press" morphed into a description of individuals and companies engaged in an often competitive commercial media enterprise." A recent trend in citizen journalism has been the emergence of what blogger Jeff Jarvis terms hyperlocal journalism, as online news sites invite contributions from local residents of their subscription areas, who often report on topics that conventional newspapers tend to ignore. "We are the traditional journalism model turned upside down," explains Mary Lou Fulton, the publisher of the Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, California. "Instead of being the gatekeeper, telling people that what's important to them 'isn't news,' we're just opening up the gates and letting people come on in. We are a better community newspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as the eyes and ears for the Voice, rather than having everything filtered through the views of a small group of reporters and editors." Citizen journalists According to Jay Rosen, citizen journalists are "the people formerly known as the audience," who "were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all. ... The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable." Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with a home-movie camera, is sometimes presented as an ancestor to citizen journalists. Egyptian citizen Wael Abbas was awarded several international reporting prizes for his blog Misr Digital (Digital Egypt) and a video he publicized of two policemen beating a bus driver helped lead to their conviction. During 9/11 many eyewitness accounts of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center came from citizen journalists. Images and stories from citizen journalists close to the World Trade Center offered content that played a major role in the story. In 2004, when the 9.1-magnitude underwater earthquake caused a huge tsunami in Banda Aceh Indonesia and across the Indian Ocean, a weblog-based virtual network of previously unrelated bloggers emerged that covered the news in real-time, and became a vital source for the traditional media for the first week after the tsunami. A large amount of news footage from many people who experienced the tsunami was widely broadcast, as well as a good deal of "on the scene" citizen reporting and blogger analysis that was subsequently picked up by the major media outlets worldwide. Subsequent to the citizen journalism coverage of the disaster and aftermath, researchers have suggested that citizen journalists may, in fact, play a critical role in the disaster warning system itself, potentially with higher reliability than the networks of tsunami warning equipment based on technology alone which then require interpretation by disinterested third parties. The microblog Twitter played an important role during the 2009 Iranian election protests, after foreign journalists had effectively been "barred from reporting". Twitter delayed scheduled maintenance during the protests that would have shut down coverage in Iran due to the role it played in public communication. Social media platforms such as blogs, YouTube, and Twitter encourage and facilitate engagement with other citizens who participate in creating content through commenting, liking, linking, and sharing. The majority of the content produced by these amateur news bloggers was not original content, but curated information monitored and edited by these various bloggers. There has been a decline in the amateur news blogger due to social media platforms that are much easier to run and maintain, allowing individuals to easily share and create and content. Wikimedia Foundation hosts a participatory journalism web site, Wikinews. The 2021 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Special Citations and Awards was awarded to Darnella Frazier, who recorded the murder of George Floyd on her phone. Citizen journalism in a worldwide context India India has a broad media landscape expanding at "double-digit growth rates" in comparison to the West. Issues surrounding human rights violations, violence against women and everyday witness accounts. Most notably, images shared on Twitter during the 2008 Mumbai attacks is an example of citizen journalism in India. Iraq In 2004 Daylight Magazine sent a box of disposable cameras to be distributed to civilians living in Baghdad and Fallujah. These were published in May 2004 along with the work of seminal documentarians such as Susan Meiselas, Roger Hutchings, etc. In June 2004 Fred Ritchen and Pixel Press teamed up with Daylight to create a touring exhibition of the images and captions which went to various institutions around the United States including: The Council on Foreign Relations, The Center for Photography Woodstock, New York University, Union College, Michigan University, and Central Michigan University before being donated to the Archive of Documentary Art at Duke University. United Kingdom Citizen Journalism provides a platform for individuals to be considered and acknowledged on a global scale. The circulation of information and news does not fully divulge the accurate perceptions of what is going on in the world. For instance, On Our Radar contains reporting mechanisms and trained residents that reveal their voices while questioning the reluctance journalism has when considering what voices are heard and are not, based in London. On Our Radar has undertaken in making the voices in Sierra Leone heard in regards to Ebola, revealing that it contained easy access to vital sources of  information and opened more opportunities for questions and reports. Depending on the country one resides in, as societies evolve, grow, and depend more on online media outlets there is an increase of informed individuals, especially with topics regarding politics and government news. Through such evolution, citizen journalism has the capability to reach an audience that has not had the privilege of receiving higher education and still remain informed about what is surrounding them and their respective country. As demonstrated in light of demanding and distorted information given to the mass public and cleared by strong demonstrations of the capabilities of citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is a platform that provides a solution to the mistrust the public has towards the government as discrepancies arise from governmental statements and actions. In 2020, a network of local Citizen Journalist publications, the Bylines Network, was founded, and has since spread to include 7 regional branches. China Citizen journalism has created much change and influence within Chinese media and society in which its online activity is very much controlled. The interconnection built from citizen journalism and mainstream journalism in China has allotted politically and socially charged information to be distributed to promote progressive changes and serves as national sentiments. In doing so, the mass public of China has the opportunities to move around the controlled and monitored online presence and the information it contains. Citizen journalists face many repercussions when unpackaging the truth and reach domestic and global audiences. Most if not all of these repercussions result from government officials and law enforcement from the journalists respective countries. Citizen journalists are needed and depended on by the mass public but are viewed as an imminent threat to their governments. The public has had the resources to pursue this level of journalism from their surroundings and based on real life perspectives that lack censorship and influence from a higher entity. The various forms citizen journalism is formed has outdated many news and media sources as result of the authentic approach citizen journalists carry out. During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, fraudulent pictures encouraging people to pose as reporters and abuse freedom of press regulations to obstruct the police were widely circulated on social media with the aim to discredit citizen journalists. In the context of China and the national pandemic rooted from the coronavirus, many voices were censored and limited when it came to citizen journalists. This occurred in the process of visually and vocally documenting the social climate of China in regards to the coronavirus. For instance, a Chinese citizen journalist posted videos of Wuhan, China as the outbreak had been spreading globally. As a result the journalist was stopped and detained by the police and was not released for two months. In sharing their experience being detained after being released the tone it was expressed in was marketed. This citizen journalist experience is one amongst more of who were similarly detained and censored. Iran In 2023 after Mahsa Amini protests government criminalized Iranians filming police. Criticisms Objectivity Citizen journalists also may be activists within the communities they write about. This has drawn some criticism from traditional media institutions such as The New York Times, which have accused proponents of public journalism of abandoning the traditional goal of objectivity. Researchers have also criticized this practice as not having access to real time fact checking. Many traditional journalists view citizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that only trained journalists can understand the exactitude and ethics involved in reporting news. See, e.g., Nicholas Lemann, Vincent Maher, and Tom Grubisich. An academic paper by Vincent Maher, the head of the New Media Lab at Rhodes University, outlined several weaknesses in the claims made by citizen journalists, in terms of the "three deadly E's", referring to ethics, economics, and epistemology. An analysis by language and linguistics professor, Patricia Bou-Franch, found that some citizen journalists resorted to abuse-sustaining discourses naturalizing violence against women. She found that these discourses were then challenged by others who questioned the gendered ideologies of male violence against women. Quality An article in 2005 by Tom Grubisich reviewed ten new citizen journalism sites and found many of them lacking in quality and content. Grubisich followed up a year later with, "Potemkin Village Redux." He found that the best sites had improved editorially and were even nearing profitability, but only by not expensing editorial costs. Also according to the article, the sites with the weakest editorial content were able to expand aggressively because they had stronger financial resources. Another article published on Pressthink examined Backfence, a citizen journalism site with three initial locations in the D.C. area, which reveals that the site has only attracted limited citizen contributions. The author concludes that, "in fact, clicking through Backfence's pages feels like frontier land – remote, often lonely, zoned for people but not home to any. The site recently launched for Arlington, Virginia. However, without more settlers, Backfence may wind up creating more ghost towns." David Simon, a former reporter for The Baltimore Sun and writer-producer of the television series The Wire, criticized the concept of citizen journalism, claiming that unpaid bloggers who write as a hobby cannot replace trained, professional, seasoned journalists. An editorial published by The Digital Journalist web magazine expressed a similar position, advocating to abolish the term "citizen journalist" and replace it with "citizen news gatherer". While the fact that citizen journalists can report in real time and are not subject to oversight opens them to criticism about the accuracy of their reporting, news stories presented by mainstream media also misreport facts occasionally that are reported correctly by citizen journalists. As low as 32% of the American population have a fair amount of trust in the media. Effects on traditional journalism Journalism has been affected significantly due to citizen journalism. This is because citizen journalism allows people to post as much content as they want, whenever they want. In order to stay competitive, traditional news sources are forcing their journalists to compete. This means that journalists now have to write, edit and add pictures into their content and they must do so at a rapid pace, as it is perceived by news companies that it's essential for journalists to produce content at the same rate that citizens can post content on the internet. This is hard though, as many news companies are facing budget cuts and cannot afford to pay journalists the proper amount for the amount of work they do. Despite the uncertainties of a job in journalism and rising tuition costs there has been a 35% increase in journalism majors throughout the past few years according to Astra Taylor in her book The People's Platform. Legal repercussions Edward Greenberg, a New York City litigator, notes higher vulnerability of unprofessional journalists in court compared to the professional ones: The view stated above does not mean that professional journalists are fully protected by shield laws. In the 1972 Branzburg v. Hayes case the Supreme Court of the United States invalidated the use of the First Amendment as a defense for reporters summoned to testify before a grand jury. In 2005, the reporter's privilege of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper was rejected by the appellate court. Possible future Citizen journalism increased during the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, associated with the creation of the internet which introduced new ways in communicating and engaging news. In 2004 Leonard Witt wrote in the National Civic Review, "the voices of a range of citizens are being heard loud and clear on the Internet, mostly through Weblogs." Due to this shift in technology, individuals were able to access more news than previously and at a much faster rate. This larger quantity also made it so there was a larger variety of sources which people were able to consume media and news. Citizen journalism has proven itself to be an effective form of current event coverage and can possibly signify a shift in modern media. Citizen journalism has been expanding in different varieties of modern media which include, international news, more democratic journalism, mainstream media, and the importance for mass media outlets. Citizen journalism is now one of the main contributors of mainstream news and consistently feeding in information that even traditional journalist can't grasp their hands on. This could eventually lead to citizen journalism to become one of the main sources for news everywhere as the internet and constant information being provided by citizen journalist are key factors contributing to citizen journalism increasing. Natalie Fenton discusses the role of citizen journalism within the digital age and has three characteristics associated with the topic: speed and space, multiplicity and poly-centrality, and interactivity and participation. Current instances of citizen journalism Citizen journalism has become a recent topic of discussion regarding its efficacy in documenting the downfall of popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried. This recent instance of popular media relying on citizen journalism marks the ever-expanding development of the pseudo-reporting strategy. There is a measurable decrease in interest for traditional news sources as more become disinterested by apparent bias and political influence. Another example of citizen journalism proving to be a viable source of information communication was in the recent coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Utilising popular video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, citizen journalists provide viewers with current updates regarding developments on the frontline as well as covering larger factors contributing to the developing story. Proponents and facilitators Dan Gillmor, the former technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, founded a nonprofit, the Center for Citizen Media, (2005–2009) to help promote it. Professor Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, chairs the Advisory Board for Jamaican citizen journalism startup On the Ground News Reports. Maurice Ali founded one of the first international citizen journalist associations, the International Association of Independent Journalists Inc. (IAIJ), in 2003. The association through its President (Maurice Ali) published studies and articles on citizen journalism, attended and spoken at UNESCO and United Nations events as advocates of citizen journalism worldwide. See also Democratic journalism Global Voices Online Independent Media Center Meporter – Citizen journalist application to create hyperlocal, real-time news Open-source journalism References External links .

Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism, or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds on the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. As such, all people should be accorded equal rights and treatment under the law. Egalitarian doctrines have supported many modern social movements, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights. One key aspect of egalitarianism is its emphasis on equal opportunities for all individuals, regardless of their background or circumstances. This means ensuring that everyone has access to the same resources, education, and opportunities to succeed in life. By promoting equal opportunities, egalitarianism aims to level the playing field and reduce disparities that result from social inequalities. Forms Some specifically focused egalitarian concerns include communism, legal egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, political egalitarianism, gender egalitarianism, racial equality, equality of opportunity, and Christian egalitarianism. Common forms of egalitarianism include political and philosophical. Legal egalitarianism One argument is that liberalism provides democratic societies with the means to carry out civic reform by providing a framework for developing public policy and providing the correct conditions for individuals to achieve civil rights. There are two major types of equality: Formal equality: individual merit-based equality of opportunity. Substantive equality: moves away from individual merit-based comparison towards equality of outcomes for groups and social equity. Equality of person The English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the United States Constitution use only the term person in operative language involving fundamental rights and responsibilities, except for a reference to men in the English Bill of Rights regarding men on trial for treason; and a rule of proportional Congressional representation in the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. As the rest of the Constitution, in its operative language the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution uses the term person, stating that "nor shall any State deprives any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Gender equality The motto "" was used during the French Revolution and is still used as an official motto of the French government. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen French Constitution is also framed with this basis in equal rights of humankind. The Declaration of Independence of the United States is an example of an assertion of equality of men as "All men are created equal" and the wording of men and man is a reference to both men and women, i.e., mankind. John Locke is sometimes considered the founder of this form. Many state constitutions in the United States also use the rights of man language rather than rights of person since the noun man has always been a reference to and an inclusion of both men and women. The Tunisian Constitution of 2014 provides that "men and women shall be equal in their rights and duties". Feminism is informed by egalitarian philosophy, being a gender-focused philosophy of equality. Feminism is distinguished from egalitarianism by also existing as a political and social movement. Social egalitarianism At a cultural level, egalitarian theories have developed in sophistication and acceptance during the past two hundred years. Among the notable broadly egalitarian philosophies are socialism, communism, social anarchism, libertarian socialism, left-libertarianism, and progressivism, some of which propound economic egalitarianism. Anti-egalitarianism or elitism is opposition to egalitarianism. Economic An early example of equality is what might be described as outcome economic egalitarianism is the Chinese philosophy of agriculturalism which held that the economic policies of a country need to be based upon egalitarian self-sufficiency. In socialism, social ownership of means of production is sometimes considered to be a form of economic egalitarianism because in an economy characterized by social ownership the surplus product generated by industry would accrue to the population as a whole as opposed to a class of private owners, thereby granting each increased autonomy and greater equality in their relationships with one another. Although the economist Karl Marx is sometimes mistaken to be an egalitarian, Marx eschewed normative theorizing on moral principles altogether. Marx did have a theory of the evolution of moral principles concerning specific economic systems. The American economist John Roemer has put forth a new perspective on equality and its relationship to socialism. Roemer attempts to reformulate Marxist analysis to accommodate normative principles of distributive justice, shifting the argument for socialism away from purely technical and materialist reasons to one of distributive justice. Roemer argues that according to the principle of distributive justice, the traditional definition of socialism is based on the principle that individual compensation is proportional to the value of the labor one expends in production ("To each according to his contribution") is inadequate. Roemer concludes that egalitarians must reject socialism as it is classically defined for equality to be realized. The egalitarian management style focusses on the approach to democratize power, decision-making, and responsibility and distributed them more evenly among all members of a team or organization. Egalitarianism and non-human animals Many philosophers, including Ingmar Persson, Peter Vallentyne, Nils Holtug, Catia Faria and Lewis Gompertz, have argued that egalitarianism implies that the interests of non-human animals must be taken into account as well. Philosopher Oscar Horta has further argued that egalitarianism implies rejecting speciesism, ceasing to exploit non-human animals and aiding animals suffering in nature. Furthermore, Horta argues that non-human animals should be prioritized since they are worse off than humans. Religious and spiritual egalitarianism Christianity In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Galatians 3:28 ("There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus") in a pamphlet opposing racial segregation in the United States. He wrote, "Racial segregation is a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ." He also alluded to that verse at the end of his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. The verse is cited to support an egalitarian interpretation of Christianity. According to Jakobus M. Vorster, the central question debated by theologians is whether the statement about ecclesiastical relationships can be translated into a Christian-ethical norm for all human relationships. Vorster argues that it can, and that the verse provides a Christian foundation for the promotion of human rights and equality, in contrast to "patriarchy, racism and exploitation" which in his opinion are caused by human sinfulness. Karin Neutel notes how some apply the philosophy of Paul's statement to include sexuality, health and race saying "[The original] three pairs must have been as relevant in the first century, as the additional categories are today." She argues that the verse points to a utopian, cosmopolitan community. Islam The verse 49:13 of The Quran states: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted". Muhammad echoed these egalitarian sentiments, sentiments that clashed with the practices of the pre-Islamic cultures. In a review of Louise Marlow's Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought, Ismail Poonawala argues the desire for the Arab-Muslim Empire to consolidate power and administer the state rather led to the deemphasis of egalitarian teachings in the Qur'an and by the Prophet. Modern egalitarianism theory Modern egalitarianism is a theory that rejects the classic definition of egalitarianism as a possible achievement economically, politically, and socially. Modern egalitarianism theory, or new egalitarianism, outlines that if everyone had the same opportunity cost, then there would be no comparative advances and no one would gain from trading with each other. In essence, the immense gains people receive from trading with each other arise because they are unequal in characteristics and talents—these differences may be innate or developed so that people can gain from trading with each other. Discussion Alexander Berkman and Thompson et. al Thompson et al. theorize that any society consisting of only one perspective, be it egalitarianism, hierarchies, individualist, fatalist or autonomists will be inherently unstable as the claim is that an interplay between all these perspectives are required if each perspective is to be fulfilling. Although an individualist according to cultural theory is aversive towards both principles and groups, individualism is not fulfilling if individual brilliance cannot be recognized by groups, or if individual brilliance cannot be made permanent in the form of principles. Accordingly, they argue that egalitarians have no power except through their presence, unless they (by definition, reluctantly) embrace principles which enable them to cooperate with fatalists and hierarchies. They argue that this means they will also have no individual sense of direction without a group, which could be mitigated by following individuals outside their group, namely autonomists or individualists. Alexander Berkman suggests that "equality does not mean an equal amount but equal opportunity. ... Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp. True anarchist equality implies freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that everyone must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same manner. Far from it: the very reverse. ... Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is an equal opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality. ... Far from leveling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development. For human character is diverse." The cultural theory of risk holds egalitarianism—with fatalism termed as its opposite—as defined by a negative attitude towards rules and principles; and a positive attitude towards group decision-making. The theory distinguishes between hierarchists, who are positive towards both rules and groups; and egalitarians, who are positive towards groups, but negative towards rules. This is by definition a form of anarchist equality as referred to by Berkman. Thus, the fabric of an egalitarian society is held together by cooperation and implicit peer pressure rather than by explicit rules and punishment. Marxism Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that an international proletarian revolution would bring about a socialist society which would then eventually give way to a communist stage of social development which would be a classless, stateless, moneyless, humane society erected on common ownership of the means of production and the principle of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Marxism rejected egalitarianism in the sense of greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of the abolition of classes based on the division between workers and owners of productive property. Allen Woods finds that Marx's view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest such as a universal notion of equality, but it was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires, making Marx's notion of communist society radically individualistic. Although his position is often confused or conflated with distributive egalitarianism in which only the goods and services resulting from production are distributed according to notional equality, Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as abstract and bourgeois, preferring to focus on more concrete principles such as opposition to exploitation on materialist grounds and economic logic. Murray Rothbard In the title essay of his book Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, Murray Rothbard argued that egalitarian theory always results in a politics of statist control because it is founded on revolt against the ontological structure of reality itself. According to Rothbard, individuals are naturally unequal in their abilities, talents, and characteristics. He believed that this inequality was not only natural but necessary for a functioning society. In his view, people's unique qualities and abilities are what allow them to contribute to society in different ways. Rothbard argued that egalitarianism was a misguided attempt to impose an artificial equality on individuals, which would ultimately lead to societal breakdown. He believed that attempts to force equality through government policies or other means would stifle individual freedom and prevent people from pursuing their own interests and passions. Furthermore, Rothbard believed that egalitarianism was rooted in envy and resentment towards those who were more successful or talented than others. He saw it as a destructive force that would lead to a culture of mediocrity, where people were discouraged from striving for excellence. Equity The Atlas movement defines equitism as the idea that all groups should have equal rights and benefits. The term has been used as the claimed philosophical basis of Telosa, a proposed utopia to be built in the United States by Marc Lore. Social equity is about equality of outcomes for each groups, while egalitarianism generally advocates for equality of opportunity, recognizing that a fair society should provide all members with the same opportunities while recognizing that different outcomes are expected due to human individuality. See also "All men are created equal" Animal rights Asset-based egalitarianism Citizen's dividend Consociationalism Deep ecology Discrimination Economic inequality Egalitarian social choice rule Equal consideration of interests Equal opportunity Equality of outcome Feminism Gift economy Inequity aversion Left-wing politics Legal status of transgender people LGBT rights by country or territory Men's rights movement Men's liberation movement Meritocracy Mutualism Natural rights and legal rights Political egalitarianism One man, one vote Reciprocal altruism Redistributive justice Same-sex marriage Social dividend Transfeminism Universal basic income References External links Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Economic ideologies Equality rights Consequentialism Fairness criteria Human rights Political culture Political ideologies Social inequality Social justice Social theories

Oligarchy

Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control. Throughout history, power structures considered to be oligarchies have often been viewed as coercive, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, contrasting it with aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was the perverted form of aristocracy. Types Minority rule The consolidation of power by a dominant religious or ethnic minority can be considered a form of oligarchy. Examples include South Africa during apartheid, Liberia under Americo-Liberians, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, and Rhodesia. In these cases, oligarchic rule was often tied to the legacy of colonialism. In the early 20th century, Robert Michels expanded on this idea in his Iron Law of Oligarchy He argued that even democracies, like all large organizations, tend to become oligarchic due to the necessity of dividing labor, which ultimately results in a ruling class focused on maintaining its power. Putative oligarchies Business groups may be considered oligarchies if they meet the following criteria: They are the largest private owners in the country. They possess sufficient political power to influence their own interests. The owners control multiple businesses, coordinating activities across sectors. Intellectual oligarchies George Bernard Shaw coined the concept of an intellectual oligarchy in his play Major Barbara (1907). In the play, Shaw criticizes the control of society by intellectual elites and expresses a desire for the empowerment of the common people:I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who, once in authority, is the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors. I want a democratic power strong enough to force the intellectual oligarchy to use its genius for the general good or else perish. Countries perceived as oligarchies Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page have described Colombia, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore and the United States as oligarchies. The Philippines During the Presidency of Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986, several monopolies arose in the Philippines, primarily linked to the Marcos family and their close associates. Analysts have described this period, and even subsequent decades, as an era of oligarchy in the Philippines. President Rodrigo Duterte, elected in 2016, promised to dismantle the oligarchy during his presidency. However, corporate oligarchy persisted throughout his tenure. While Duterte criticized prominent tycoons such as the Ayalas and Manny Pangilinan, corporate figures allied with Duterte, including Dennis Uy of Udenna Corporation, benefitted during his administration. Russian Federation Since the Dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent Privatization of state-owned assets, a class of Russian oligarchs emerged. These oligarchs gained control of significant portions of the economy, especially in the energy, metals, and natural resources sectors. Many of these individuals maintained close ties with government officials, particularly the president, leading some to characterize modern Russia as an oligarchy intertwined with the state. Iran The Islamic Republic of Iran, established after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, is sometimes described as a clerical oligarchy. Its ruling system, known as Velayat-e-Faqih (Governance of the Jurist), places power in the hands of a small group of high-ranking Shia clerics, led by the Supreme Leader. This group holds significant influence over the country's legislative, military, and economic affairs, and critics argue that this system concentrates power in a religious elite, marginalizing other voices within society. Ukraine Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, a powerful class of business elites, known as Ukrainian oligarchs, has played a significant role in the country's politics and economy. These oligarchs gained control of state assets during the rapid privatization that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. By 2021, Ukraine passed a law aimed at curbing oligarchic influence on politics and the economy. United States Several commentators and scholars have suggested that the United States demonstrates characteristics of an oligarchy, particularly in relation to the concentration of wealth and political influence among a small elite, as exemplified by the list of top (political party) donors. Economist Simon Johnson argued that the rise of an American financial oligarchy became particularly prominent following the 2008 financial crisis. This financial elite has been described as wielding significant power over both the economy and political decisions. Former President Jimmy Carter in 2015 characterized the United States as an "oligarchy with unlimited political bribery" following the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision, which removed limits on donations to political campaigns . In 2014, a study by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University argued that the United States' political system does not primarily reflect the preferences of its average citizens. Their analysis of policy outcomes between 1981 and 2002 suggested that wealthy individuals and business groups held substantial influence over political decisions, often sidelining the majority of Americans. While the United States maintains democratic features such as regular elections, freedom of speech, and widespread suffrage, the study noted that policy decisions are disproportionately influenced by economic elites. However, the study received criticism from other scholars, who argued that the influence of average citizens should not be discounted and that the conclusions about oligarchic tendencies were overstated. Gilens and Page defended their research, reiterating that while they do not label the United States an outright oligarchy, they found substantial evidence of economic elites dominating certain areas of policy-making. China The National Geographic Society's online encyclopedia considers China to be an oligarchy. See also Aristocracy Cacique democracy Despotism Dictatorship Inverted totalitarianism Iron law of oligarchy Kleptocracy Meritocracy Military dictatorship Minoritarianism Nepotism Netocracy Oligopoly Oligarchical collectivism Parasitism Plutocracy Political family Power behind the throne The Power Elite (1956 book by C. Wright Mills) Polyarchy Stratocracy Synarchism Theocracy Timocracy References Further reading Ostwald, M. (2000), Oligarchia: The Development of a Constitutional Form in Ancient Greece (Historia Einzelschirften; 144). Stuttgart: Steiner, . External links Authoritarianism Political culture

Political structure

Political structure is a commonly used term in political science. In a general sense, it refers to institutions or even groups and their relations to each other, their patterns of interaction within political systems and to political regulations, laws and the norms present in political systems in such a way that they constitute the political landscape and the political entity. In the social domain, its counterpart is social structure. Political structure also refers to the way in which a government is run. Political structure refers to how the governmental system of a country is arranged. References External links Law Library of Congress with links to political structure articles Avalon project at Yale Law School on the Athenian Constitution by Aristotle (in English) Sir Frederic G. Kenyon's translation of Aristotle on the political structure (or constitution) of the ancient city-state of Athens, which is usually considered a prime inspiration for the form of government chosen for the United States Social philosophy Political science terminology

Direct democracy

Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are representative democracies. The theory and practice of direct democracy and participation as its common characteristic constituted the core of the work of many theorists, philosophers, politicians, and social critics, among whom the most important are Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and G.D.H. Cole. Overview In direct democracy the people decide on policies without any intermediary or representative, whereas in a representative democracy people vote for representatives who then enact policy initiatives. Depending on the particular system in use, direct democracy might entail passing executive decisions, the use of sortition, making laws, directly electing or dismissing officials, and conducting trials. Two leading forms of direct democracy are participatory democracy and deliberative democracy. Semi-direct democracies, in which representatives administer day-to-day governance, but the citizens remain the sovereign, allow for three forms of popular action: referendum (plebiscite), initiative, and recall. The first two forms—referendums and initiatives—are examples of direct legislation. , thirty countries allowed for referendums initiated by the population on the national level. A compulsory referendum subjects the legislation drafted by political elites to a binding popular vote. This is the most common form of direct legislation. A popular referendum empowers citizens to make a petition that calls existing legislation to a vote by the citizens. Institutions specify the timeframe for a valid petition and the number of signatures required and may require signatures from diverse communities to protect minority interests. This form of direct democracy effectively grants the voting public a veto on laws adopted by the elected legislature, as in Switzerland. A citizen-initiated referendum, also called an initiative, empowers members of the general public to propose, by petition, specific statutory measures or constitutional reforms to the government and, as with other referendums, the vote may be binding or simply advisory. Initiatives may be direct or indirect: with the direct initiative, a successful proposition is placed directly on the ballot to be subject to vote (as exemplified by California's system). With an indirect initiative, a successful proposition is first presented to the legislature for their consideration; however, if no acceptable action is taken after a designated period of time, the proposition moves to direct popular vote. Constitutional amendments in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or Uruguay goes through such a form of indirect initiative. A deliberative referendum is a referendum that increases public deliberation through purposeful institutional design. Power of recall gives the public the power to remove elected officials from office before the end of their designated standard term of office. Mandatory referendums correspond to majority rule while optional referendums and popular initiatives correspond to consensus democracy (e.g. Switzerland). History Antiquity One strand of thought sees direct democracy as common and widespread in pre-state societies. The earliest well-documented direct democracy is said to be the Athenian democracy of the 5th century BC. The main bodies in the Athenian democracy were the assembly, composed of male citizens; the boulê, composed of 500 citizens; and the law courts, composed of a massive number of jurors chosen by lot, with no judges. Ancient Attica had only about 30,000 male citizens, but several thousand of them were politically active in each year and many of them quite regularly for years on end. The Athenian democracy was direct not only in the sense that the assembled people made decisions, but also in the sense that the people – through the assembly, boulê, and law courts – controlled the entire political process, and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in public affairs. Most modern democracies, being representative, not direct, do not resemble the Athenian system. Moreover, the Athenian democracy was exclusive. For example, in Athens in the middle of the 4th century there were about 100,000 citizens (Athenian citizenship was limited to men and women whose parents had also been Athenian citizens), about 10,000 metoikoi, or “resident foreigners,” and 150,000 slaves. Out of all those people, only male citizens who were older than 18 were a part of the demos, meaning only about 40,000 people could participate in the democratic process. Also relevant to the history of direct democracy is the history of Ancient Rome, specifically during the Roman Republic, traditionally founded around 509 BC. Rome displayed many aspects of democracy, both direct and indirect, from the era of Roman monarchy all the way to the collapse of the Roman Empire. While the Roman senate was the main body with historical longevity, lasting from the Roman kingdom until after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, it did not embody a purely democratic approach, being made up – during the late republic – of former elected officials, providing advice rather than creating law. The democratic aspect of the constitution resided in the Roman popular assemblies, where the people organized into centuriae or into tribes – depending on the assembly – and cast votes on various matters, including elections and laws, proposed before them by their elected magistrates. Some classicists have argued that the Roman republic deserves the label of "democracy", with universal suffrage for adult male citizens, popular sovereignty, and transparent deliberation of public affairs. Many historians mark the end of the Republic with the lex Titia, passed on 27 November 43 BC, which eliminated many oversight provisions. Modern era Modern-era citizen-lawmaking occurs in the cantons of Switzerland from the 13th century. In 1847 the Swiss added the "statute referendum" to their national constitution. They soon discovered that merely having the power to veto Parliament's laws was not enough. In 1891 they added the "constitutional amendment initiative". Swiss politics since 1891 have given the world a valuable experience-base with the national-level constitutional amendment initiative. In the past 120 years, more than 240 initiatives have been put to referendums. Most popular initiatives are discussed and approved by the Parliament before the referendum. Out of the remaining initiatives that go to the referendum, only about 10% are approved by voters; in addition, voters often opt for a version of the initiative rewritten by the government. (See "Direct democracy in Switzerland" below.) Some of the issues surrounding the related notion of a direct democracy using the Internet and other communications technologies are dealt with in the article on e-democracy and below under the heading Electronic direct democracy. More concisely, the concept of open-source governance applies principles of the free software movement to the governance of people, allowing the entire populace to participate in government directly, as much or as little as they please. Examples Early Athens Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 600 BC. Athens was one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model, none were as powerful, stable, or well-documented as that of Athens. In the direct democracy of Athens, the citizens did not nominate representatives to vote on legislation and executive bills on their behalf (as in the United States) but instead voted as individuals. The public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire of the comic poets in the theatres. Solon (594 BC), Cleisthenes (508–507 BCE), and Ephialtes (462 BC) all contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Historians differ on which of them was responsible for which institution, and which of them most represented a truly democratic movement. It is most usual to date Athenian democracy from Cleisthenes since Solon's constitution fell and was replaced by the tyranny of Peisistratus, whereas Ephialtes revised Cleisthenes' constitution relatively peacefully. Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were subsequently honored by the Athenians for their alleged restoration of Athenian freedom. The greatest and longest-lasting democratic leader was Pericles; after his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by an oligarchic revolution towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleides; the most detailed accounts are of this 4th-century modification rather than of the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the Macedonians in 322 BC. The Athenian institutions were later revived, but the extent to which they were a real democracy is debatable. Sociologist Max Weber believed that every mass democracy went in a Caesarist direction. Professor of law Gerhard Casper writes, "Weber employed the term to stress, inter alia, the plebiscitary character of elections, disdain for parliament, the non-toleration of autonomous powers within the government and a failure to attract or suffer independent political minds." Liechtenstein Despite being a monarchy, direct democracy is considered to be an engrained element of Liechtensteiner politics. If called for by at least 1,000 citizens, a referendum on any law can be initiated. Referendums can suspend parliament or change the constitution, but at least 1,500 citizens must vote affirmative, so referendums to suspend parliament or change the constitution fail if they have low turnout even if the required percentage of total voters is met. Switzerland The pure form of direct democracy exists only in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus. The Swiss Confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with strong instruments of direct democracy). The nature of direct democracy in Switzerland is fundamentally complemented by its federal governmental structures (in German also called the Subsidiaritätsprinzip). Most western countries have representative systems. Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. On any political level citizens can propose changes to the constitution (popular initiative) or ask for an optional referendum to be held on any law voted by the federal, cantonal parliament and/or municipal legislative body. The list for mandatory or optional referendums on each political level are generally much longer in Switzerland than in any other country; for example, any amendment to the constitution must automatically be voted on by the Swiss electorate and cantons, on cantonal/communal levels often any financial decision of a certain substantial amount decreed by legislative and/or executive bodies as well. Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a schoolhouse or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year. Between January 1995 and June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times, on 103 federal questions besides many more cantonal and municipal questions. During the same period, French citizens participated in only two referendums. In Switzerland, simple majorities are sufficient at the municipal and cantonal level, at the federal level double majorities are required on constitutional issues. A double majority requires approval by a majority of individuals voting, and also by a majority of cantons. Thus, in Switzerland, a citizen-proposed amendment to the federal constitution (i.e. popular initiative) cannot be passed at the federal level if a majority of the people approve but a majority of the cantons disapprove. For referendums or propositions in general terms (like the principle of a general revision of the Constitution), a majority of those voting is sufficient (Swiss Constitution, 2005). In 1890, when the provisions for Swiss national citizen lawmaking were being debated by civil society and government, the Swiss adopted the idea of double majorities from the United States Congress, in which House votes were to represent the people and Senate votes were to represent the states. According to its supporters, this "legitimacy-rich" approach to national citizen lawmaking has been very successful. Kris Kobach, former Kansas elected official, claims that Switzerland has had tandem successes both socially and economically which are matched by only a few other nations. Kobach states at the end of his book, "Too often, observers deem Switzerland an oddity among political systems. It is more appropriate to regard it as a pioneer." Finally, the Swiss political system, including its direct democratic devices in a multi-level governance context, becomes increasingly interesting for scholars of European Union integration. United States In the New England region of the United States, towns in states such as Vermont decide local affairs through the direct democratic process of the town meeting. This is the oldest form of direct democracy in the United States and predates the founding of the country by at least a century. Direct democracy was not what the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned for the nation. They saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. As a result, they advocated a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy. For example, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10, advocates a constitutional republic over direct democracy precisely to protect the individual from the will of the majority. He says, Other framers spoke against pure democracy. John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said: "Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage." At the New York Ratifying Convention, Alexander Hamilton was quoted saying "that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is falser than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity." Despite the framers' intentions at the beginning of the republic, ballot measures and their corresponding referendums have been widely used at the state and sub-state level. There is much state and federal case law, from the early 1900s to the 1990s, that protects the people's right to each of these direct democracy governance components (Magleby, 1984, and Zimmerman, 1999). The first United States Supreme Court ruling in favor of the citizen lawmaking was in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 in 1912 (Zimmerman, December 1999). President Theodore Roosevelt, in his "Charter of Democracy" speech to the Ohio Constitutional Convention (1912), stated: "I believe in the Initiative and Referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative." In various states, referendums through which the people rule include: Referrals by the legislature to the people of "proposed constitutional amendments" (constitutionally used in 49 states, excepting only Delaware – Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004). Referrals by the legislature to the people of "proposed statute laws" (constitutionally used in all 50 states – Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004). Constitutional amendment initiative is a constitutionally defined petition process of "proposed constitutional law", which, if successful, results in its provisions being written directly into the state's constitution. Since constitutional law cannot be altered by state legislatures, this direct democracy component gives the people an automatic superiority and sovereignty, over representative government (Magelby, 1984). It is utilized at the state level in nineteen states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and South Dakota (Cronin, 1989). Among these states, there are three main types of the constitutional amendment initiative, with different degrees of involvement of the state legislature distinguishing between the types (Zimmerman, December 1999). Statute law initiative is a constitutionally defined, citizen-initiated petition process of "proposed statute law", which, if successful, results in law being written directly into the state's statutes. The statute initiative is used at the state level in twenty-one states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989). In Utah, there is no constitutional provision for citizen lawmaking. All of Utah's I&R law is in the state statutes (Zimmerman, December 1999). In most states, there is no special protection for citizen-made statutes; the legislature can begin to amend them immediately. Statute law referendum is a constitutionally defined, citizen-initiated petition process of the "proposed veto of all or part of a legislature-made law", which, if successful, repeals the standing law. It is used at the state level in twenty-four states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989). The recall election is a citizen-initiated process which, if successful, removes an elected official from office and replaces him or her. The first recall device in the United States was adopted in Los Angeles in 1903. Typically, the process involves the collection of citizen petitions for the recall of an elected official; if a sufficient number of valid signatures are collected and verified, a recall election is triggered. There have been four gubernatorial recall elections in U.S. history (two of which resulted in the recall of the governor) and 38 recall elections for state legislators (55% of which succeeded). Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have a recall function for state officials. Additional states have recall functions for local jurisdictions. Some states require specific grounds for a recall petition campaign. Statute law affirmation is available in Nevada. It allows the voters to collect signatures to place on the ballot a question asking the state citizens to affirm a standing state law. Should the law get affirmed by a majority of state citizens, the state legislature will be barred from ever amending the law, and it can be amended or repealed only if approved by a majority of state citizens in a direct vote. Direct democracy by country The strength of direct democracy in individual countries can be quantitatively compared by the Citizen-initiated component of direct popular vote index in V-Dem Democracy indices. A higher index indicates more direct democracy popular initiatives and referendums, shown below for individual countries. Only countries with index above 0 are shown. Democratic reform trilemma Democratic theorists have identified a trilemma due to the presence of three desirable characteristics of an ideal system of direct democracy, which are challenging to deliver all at once. These three characteristics are participation – widespread participation in the decision-making process by the people affected; deliberation – a rational discussion where all major points of view are weighted according to evidence; and equality – all members of the population on whose behalf decisions are taken have an equal chance of having their views taken into account. Empirical evidence from dozens of studies suggests deliberation leads to better decision making. The most popularly disputed form of direct popular participation is the referendum on constitutional matters. For the system to respect the principle of political equality, either everyone needs to be involved or there needs to be a representative random sample of people chosen to take part in the discussion. In the definition used by scholars such as James Fishkin, deliberative democracy is a form of direct democracy which satisfies the requirement for deliberation and equality but does not make provision to involve everyone who wants to be included in the discussion. Participatory democracy, by Fishkin's definition, allows inclusive participation and deliberation, but at a cost of sacrificing equality, because if widespread participation is allowed, sufficient resources rarely will be available to compensate people who sacrifice their time to participate in the deliberation. Therefore, participants tend to be those with a strong interest in the issue to be decided and often will not therefore be representative of the overall population. Fishkin instead argues that random sampling should be used to select a small, but still representative, number of people from the general public. Fishkin concedes it is possible to imagine a system that transcends the trilemma, but it would require very radical reforms if such a system were to be integrated into mainstream politics. Relation to other movements In schools Democratic schools modeled on Summerhill School resolve conflicts and make school policy decisions through full school meetings in which the votes of students and staff are weighted equally. Criticism The core criticism of direct democracy coincides with democracy's overall criticism. Critics have historically expressed doubts of the populace's capacity of participation, deeming its advocates utopian. Despite this, instances of direct democracy - such as the Petrograd Soviet - lack documented incidents involving participation deficits or mobocracy. From the liberal democratic standpoint, restraining popular influence stonewalls the state of nature, protecting property rights. Adversaries of greater democratization cast doubt on human nature, painting a narrative of misinformation and impulsivity. MAREZ, utilizing sortition, had managed itself successfully prior to being overrun by drug cartels, as did FEJUVE remaining tranquil with self-managed organizations. Although Revolutionary Catalonia had demonstrated the feasibility of non-liberal democracy, critics have continued to deride its presumed mobocratic nature, although there are no recorded instances of tyranny of the majority. It is of note that direct democracy's critics have emerged from Hobbesian and liberal philosophy. See also Anarcho-communism Citizens' assembly Deliberative democracy Libertarian socialism Liquid democracy Participatory democracy Participatory economics Populism Sociocracy Sortition Workers' councils References Bibliography Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Marabello, Thomas Quinn. (2023) "The Origins of Democracy in Switzerland", Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 59: No. 1, Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol59/iss1/4 Razsa, Maple. (2015) Bastards of Utopia: Living Radical Politics After Socialism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Further reading Arnon, Harel (January 2008). "A Theory of Direct Legislation" (LFB Scholarly) Cronin, Thomas E. (1989). Direct Democracy: The Politics Of Initiative, Referendum, And Recall. Harvard University Press. De Vos et al (2014) South African Constitutional Law – In Context: Oxford University Press Finley, M.I. (1973). Democracy Ancient And Modern. Rutgers University Press. Fotopoulos, Takis, Towards an Inclusive Democracy: The Crisis of the Growth Economy and the Need for a New Liberatory Project (London & NY: Cassell, 1997). Fotopoulos, Takis, The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy. (Athens: Gordios, 2005). (English translation of the book with the same title published in Greek). Fotopoulos, Takis, "Liberal and Socialist 'Democracies' versus Inclusive Democracy", The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.2, no.2, (January 2006). Fuller, Roslyn, 2015, "Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost its Purpose." Zed Books. Gerber, Elisabeth R. (1999). The Populist Paradox: Interest Group Influence And The Promise Of Direct Legislation. Princeton University Press. Hansen, Mogens Herman (1999). The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes: Structure, Principles and Ideology. University of Oklahoma, Norman (orig. 1991). Köchler, Hans (1995). A Theoretical Examination of the Dichotomy between Democratic Constitutions and Political Reality. University Center Luxemburg. Magleby, David B. (1984). Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in The United States. Johns Hopkins University Press. Matsusaka, John G. (2004). For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy, Chicago Press. Matsusaka, John G. (2020). Let The People Rule: How Direct Democracy Can Meet the Populist Challenge, Princeton University Press. National Conference of State Legislatures (2004). "Recall of State Officials". Nissani, M., (2023), "Eight Billion Cheers for Direct Democracy: Direct Democracy is Humankind’s Last, Best, and Only Hope." Dying of the Light Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367379858_Eight_Billion_Cheers_for_Direct_Democracy_Direct_Democracy_is_Humanity's_Last_Best_and_Only_Hope/references. E-book free download. Orr Akiva e-books, Free download: Politics without politicians – Big Business, Big Government or Direct Democracy. Pimbert, Michel (2010). Reclaiming citizenship: empowering civil society in policy-making. In: Towards Food Sovereignty. http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G02612.pdf? e-book. Free download. Polybius (c.150 BC). The Histories. Oxford University, The Great Histories Series, Ed., Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, and E. Badian. Translated by Mortimer Chambers. Washington Square Press, Inc (1966). Serdült, Uwe (2014) Referendums in Switzerland, in Qvortrup, Matt (Ed.) Referendums Around the World: The Continued Growth of Direct Democracy. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 65–121. Verhulst Jos en Nijeboer Arjen Direct Democracy e-book in 8 languages. Free download. Zimmerman, Joseph F. (March 1999). The New England Town Meeting: Democracy In Action . Praeger Publishers. Zimmerman, Joseph F. (December 1999). The Initiative: Citizen Law-Making. Praeger Publishers. External links INIREF Campaign for Direct Democracy GB "What are the main features of democracy" - yoopery Society of ancient Greece Autonomy Direct action Popular sovereignty Referendums

V-Dem Institute

The V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracy), founded by Staffan I. Lindberg in 2014, studies the qualities of government. The headquarters of the project is based at the department of political science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Democracy indices The V-Dem Institute publishes a number of high-profile datasets that describe qualities of different governments, annually published and publicly available for free. These datasets are a popular dataset among political scientists, due to information on hundreds of indicator variables describing all aspects of government, especially on the quality of democracy, inclusivity, and other economic indicators. Compared to other measures of democracy (such as the Polity data series and Freedom House's Freedom in the World), the V-Dem Institute's measures of democracy are more granular and 2020 included "more than 470 indicators, 82 mid-level indices, and 5 high-level indices covering 202 polities from the period of 1789–2019." Political scientist Daniel Hegedus describes V-Dem as "the most important provider of quantitative democracy data for scholarly research." The V-Dem institute also republishes 59 other indicators and several other indices which are created, in part, with the assistance of V-Dem indices. The Digital Society Project is a subset of indicators on V-Dem's survey which asks questions about the political status of social media and the internet. Democracy Report The V-Dem Institute publishes the Democracy Report that describes the state of democracy in the world, with a focus on democratization and autocratization. The Democracy Report is published annually in March. The Democracy Report, the dataset, scientific articles, and working papers are free to download on the institute’s website, which also features interactive graphic tools. V-Party Dataset Party positions for all political parties above a vote share of 5% in 169 countries are published as V-Party Dataset by V-Dem Institute. The V-Party Dataset includes indices of Anti-Pluralism, Populism, Cultural Dimension and Economic Left-Right. The Anti-Pluralism Index is modeled as lack of commitment to democratic process, disrespect for fundamental minority rights, demonization of opponents, and acceptance of political violence. The dataset demonstrates higher autocratization for high anti-pluralism and populism. Regimes of the World The Regimes of the World (RoW) distinguishes four types of political systems: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies. This classification is built on V-Dem Democracy Core indices. See also V-Dem Democracy Indices References Further reading Max Fisher, "U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows: Washington-aligned countries backslid at nearly double the rate of non-allies, data shows, complicating long-held assumptions about American influence" New York Times Nov 16, 2021 Vanessa A. Boese, Markus Eberhardt: Which Institutions Rule? Unbundling the Democracy-Growth Nexus, V-Dem Institute, Series 2022:131, February 2022 External links Official website Political research institutes Research institutes in Sweden University of Gothenburg

Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Political scientists have created many typologies describing variations of authoritarian forms of government. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have some times been characterized as "hybrid democracies", "hybrid regimes" or "competitive authoritarian" states. The political scientist Juan Linz, in an influential 1964 work, An Authoritarian Regime: Spain, defined authoritarianism as possessing four qualities: Limited political pluralism, which is achieved with constraints on the legislature, political parties and interest groups. Political legitimacy based on appeals to emotion and identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat "easily recognizable societal problems, such as underdevelopment or insurgency." Minimal political mobilization, and suppression of anti-regime activities. Ill-defined executive powers, often vague and shifting, used to extend the power of the executive. Minimally defined, an authoritarian government lacks free and competitive direct elections to legislatures, free and competitive direct or indirect elections for executives, or both. Broadly defined, authoritarian states include countries that lack human rights such as freedom of religion, or countries in which the government and the opposition do not alternate in power at least once following free elections. Authoritarian states might contain nominally democratic institutions such as political parties, legislatures and elections which are managed to entrench authoritarian rule and can feature fraudulent, non-competitive elections. Since 1946, the share of authoritarian states in the international political system increased until the mid-1970s but declined from then until the year 2000. Prior to 2000, dictatorships typically began with a coup and replaced a pre-existing authoritarian regime. Since 2000, dictatorships are most likely to begin through democratic backsliding whereby a democratically elected leader established an authoritarian regime. Characteristics Authoritarianism is characterized by highly concentrated and centralized government power maintained by political repression and the exclusion of potential or supposed challengers by armed force. It uses political parties and mass organizations to mobilize people around the goals of the regime. Adam Przeworski has theorized that "authoritarian equilibrium rests mainly on lies, fear and economic prosperity." Authoritarianism also tends to embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of political power, a leadership that is "self-appointed and even if elected cannot be displaced by citizens' free choice among competitors", the arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties and little tolerance for meaningful opposition. A range of social controls also attempt to stifle civil society while political stability is maintained by control over and support of the armed forces, a bureaucracy staffed by the regime and creation of allegiance through various means of socialization and indoctrination. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart identify authoritarianism in politicians and political parties by looking for values of security, conformity, and obedience. Authoritarianism is marked by "indefinite political tenure" of the ruler or ruling party (often in a one-party state) or other authority. The transition from an authoritarian system to a more democratic form of government is referred to as democratization. Constitutions in authoritarian regimes Authoritarian regimes often adopt "the institutional trappings" of democracies such as constitutions. Constitutions in authoritarian states may serve a variety of roles, including "operating manual" (describing how the government is to function); "billboard" (signal of regime's intent), "blueprint" (outline of future regime plans), and "window dressing" (material designed to obfuscate, such as provisions setting forth freedoms that are not honored in practice). Authoritarian constitutions may help legitimize, strengthen, and consolidate regimes. An authoritarian constitution "that successfully coordinates government action and defines popular expectations can also help consolidate the regime's grip on power by inhibiting re coordination on a different set of arrangements." Unlike democratic constitutions, authoritarian constitutions do not set direct limits on executive authority; however, in some cases such documents may function as ways for elites to protect their own property rights or constrain autocrats' behavior. The Soviet Russia Constitution of 1918, the first charter of the new Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (RSFSR), was described by Vladimir Lenin as a "revolutionary" document. It was, he said, unlike any constitution drafted by a nation-state. The concept of "authoritarian constitutionalism" has been developed by legal scholar Mark Tushnet. Tushnet distinguishes authoritarian constitutionalist regimes from "liberal constitutionalist" regimes ("the sort familiar in the modern West, with core commitments to human rights and self-governance implemented by means of varying institutional devices") and from purely authoritarian regimes (which reject the idea of human rights or constraints on leaders' power). He describes authoritarian constitutionalist regimes as (1) authoritarian dominant-party states that (2) impose sanctions (such as libel judgments) against, but do not arbitrarily arrest, political dissidents; (3) permit "reasonably open discussion and criticism of its policies"; (4) hold "reasonably free and fair elections", without systemic intimidation, but "with close attention to such matters as the drawing of election districts and the creation of party lists to ensure as best it can that it will prevailand by a substantial margin"; (5) reflect at least occasional responsiveness to public opinion; and (6) create "mechanisms to ensure that the amount of dissent does not exceed the level it regards as desirable." Tushnet cites Singapore as an example of an authoritarian constitutionalist state, and connects the concept to that of hybrid regimes. Economy Scholars such as Seymour Lipset, Carles Boix, Susan Stokes, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens and John Stephens argue that economic development increases the likelihood of democratization. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi argue that while economic development makes democracies less likely to turn authoritarian, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that development causes democratization (turning an authoritarian state into a democracy). Eva Bellin argues that under certain circumstances the bourgeoise and labor are more likely to favor democratization, but less so under other circumstances. Economic development can boost public support for authoritarian regimes in the short-to-medium term. According to Michael Albertus, most land reform programs tend to be implemented by authoritarian regimes that subsequently withhold property rights from the beneficiaries of the land reform. Authoritarian regimes do so to gain coercive leverage over rural populations. Institutions Authoritarian regimes typically incorporate similar political institutions to that of democratic regimes, such as legislatures and judiciaries, although they may serve different purposes. Democratic regimes are marked by institutions that are essential to economic development and individual freedom, including representative legislatures and competitive political parties. Most authoritarian regimes embrace these political structures, but use it in a way that reinforces their power. Authoritarian legislatures, for example, are forums through which leaders may enhance their bases of support, share power, and monitor elites. Additionally, authoritarian party systems are extremely unstable and unconducive to party development, largely due to monopolistic patterns of authority. Judiciaries may be present in authoritarian states where they serve to repress political challengers, institutionalize punishment, and undermine the rule of law. Democratic and authoritarian arguably differ most prominently in their elections. Democratic elections are generally inclusive, competitive, and fair. In most instances, the elected leader is appointed to act on behalf of the general will. Authoritarian elections, on the other hand, are frequently subject to fraud and extreme constraints on the participation of opposing parties. Autocratic leaders employ tactics like murdering political opposition and paying election monitors to ensure victory. Despite this, the proportion of authoritarian regimes with elections and support parties has risen in recent years. This is largely due to the increasing popularity of democracies and electoral autocracies, leading authoritarian regimes to imitate democratic regimes in hopes of receiving foreign aid and dodging criticism. According to a 2018 study, most party-led dictatorships regularly hold popular elections. Prior to the 1990s, most of these elections had no alternative parties or candidates for voters to choose. Since the end of the Cold War, about two-thirds of elections in authoritarian systems allow for some opposition, but the elections are structured in a way to heavily favor the incumbent authoritarian regime. In 2020, almost half of all authoritarian systems had multi-party governments. Cabinet appointments by an authoritarian regime to outsiders can consolidate their rule by dividing the opposition and co-opting outsiders. Hindrances to free and fair elections in authoritarian systems may include: Control of the media by the authoritarian incumbents. Interference with opposition campaigning. Electoral fraud. Violence against opposition. Large-scale spending by the state in favor of the incumbents. Permitting of some parties, but not others. Prohibitions on opposition parties, but not independent candidates. Allowing competition between candidates within the incumbent party, but not those who are not in the incumbent party. Interactions with other elites and the masses The foundations of stable authoritarian rule are that the authoritarian prevents contestation from the masses and other elites. The authoritarian regime may use co-optation or repression (or carrots and sticks) to prevent revolts. Authoritarian rule entails a balancing act whereby the ruler has to maintain the support of other elites (frequently through the distribution of state and societal resources) and the support of the public (through distribution of the same resources): the authoritarian rule is at risk if the balancing act is lopsided, as it risks a coup by the elites or an uprising by the mass public. Manipulation of information According to a 2019 study by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, authoritarian regimes have over time become less reliant on violence and mass repression to maintain control. The study shows instead that authoritarians have increasingly resorted to manipulation of information as a means of control. Authoritarians increasingly seek to create an appearance of good performance, conceal state repression, and imitate democracy. While authoritarian regimes invest considerably in propaganda out of a belief that it enhances regime survival, scholars have offered mixed views as to whether propaganda is effective. Systemic weakness and resilience Andrew J. Nathan notes that "regime theory holds that authoritarian systems are inherently fragile because of weak legitimacy, overreliance on coercion, over-centralization of decision making, and the predominance of personal power over institutional norms. ... Few authoritarian regimesbe they communist, fascist, corporatist, or personalisthave managed to conduct orderly, peaceful, timely, and stable successions." Political scientist Theodore M. Vestal writes that authoritarian political systems may be weakened through inadequate responsiveness to either popular or elite demands and that the authoritarian tendency to respond to challenges by exerting tighter control, instead of by adapting, may compromise the legitimacy of an authoritarian state and lead to its collapse. One exception to this general trend is the endurance of the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party which has been unusually resilient among authoritarian regimes. Nathan posits that this can be attributed to four factors such as (1) "the increasingly norm-bound nature of its succession politics"; (2) "the increase in meritocratic as opposed to factional considerations in the promotion of political elites"; (3) "the differentiation and functional specialization of institutions within the regime"; and (4) "the establishment of institutions for political participation and appeal that strengthen the CCP's legitimacy among the public at large." Some scholars have challenged notions that authoritarian states are inherently brittle systems that require repression and propaganda to make people comply with the authoritarian regime. Adam Przeworski has challenged this, noting that while authoritarian regimes do take actions that serve to enhance regime survival, they also engage in mundane everyday governance and their subjects do not hold a posture towards the regime at all moments of their life. He writes, "People in autocracies do not incessantly live under the shadow of dramatic historical events; they lead everyday routine lives." Similarly, Thomas Pepinsky has challenged the common mental image of an authoritarian state as one of grim totalitarianism, desperate hardship, strict censorship, and dictatorial orders of murder, torture and disappearances. He writes, "life in authoritarian states is mostly boring and tolerable." Violence Yale University political scientist Milan Svolik argues that violence is a common characteristic of authoritarian systems. Violence tends to be common in authoritarian states because of a lack of independent third parties empowered to settle disputes between the dictator, regime allies, regime soldiers and the masses. Authoritarians may resort to measures referred to as coup-proofing (structures that make it hard for any small group to seize power). Coup-proofing strategies include strategically placing family, ethnic, and religious groups in the military; creating of an armed force parallel to the regular military; and developing multiple internal security agencies with overlapping jurisdiction that constantly monitor one another. Research shows that some coup-proofing strategies reduce the risk of coups occurring and reduce the likelihood of mass protests. However, coup-proofing reduces military effectiveness, and limits the rents that an incumbent can extract. A 2016 study shows that the implementation of succession rules reduce the occurrence of coup attempts. Succession rules are believed to hamper coordination efforts among coup plotters by assuaging elites who have more to gain by patience than by plotting. According to political scientists Curtis Bell and Jonathan Powell, coup attempts in neighboring countries lead to greater coup-proofing and coup-related repression in a region. A 2017 study finds that countries' coup-proofing strategies are heavily influenced by other countries with similar histories. A 2018 study in the Journal of Peace Research found that leaders who survive coup attempts and respond by purging known and potential rivals are likely to have longer tenures as leaders. A 2019 study in Conflict Management and Peace Science found that personalist dictatorships are more likely to take coup-proofing measures than other authoritarian regimes; the authors argue that this is because "personalists are characterized by weak institutions and narrow support bases, a lack of unifying ideologies and informal links to the ruler." According to a 2019 study, personalist dictatorships are more repressive than other forms of dictatorship. Typologies According to Yale professor Juan José Linz there a three main types of political regimes today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes (with hybrid regimes). Similar terms An authoritarian regime has "a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people". Unlike totalitarian states, they will allow social and economic institutions not under governmental control, and tend to rely on passive mass acceptance rather than active popular support. An Autocracy is a state/government in which one person possesses "unlimited power". A Totalitarian state is "based on subordination of the individual to the state and strict control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation especially by coercive measures (such as censorship and terrorism)". and are ruled by a single ruling party made up of loyal supporters. Unlike autocracies, which "seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition", totalitarian states are characterized by an official ideology, which "seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition", and "seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination". A Fascist state is autocratic and based on a political philosophy/movement, (such as that of the Fascisti of pre-WWII Italy) "that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition". Subtypes Several subtypes of authoritarian regimes have been identified by Linz and others. Linz identified the two most basic subtypes as traditional authoritarian regimes and bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes: Traditional authoritarian regimes are those "in which the ruling authority (generally a single person)" is maintained in power "through a combination of appeals to traditional legitimacy, patron-client ties and repression, which is carried out by an apparatus bound to the ruling authority through personal loyalties." An example is Ethiopia under Haile Selassie I. Bureaucratic-military authoritarian regimes are those "governed by a coalition of military officers and technocrats who act pragmatically (rather than ideologically) within the limits of their bureaucratic mentality." Mark J. Gasiorowski suggests that it is best to distinguish "simple military authoritarian regimes" from "bureaucratic authoritarian regimes" in which "a powerful group of technocrats uses the state apparatus to try to rationalize and develop the economy" such South Korea under Park Chung-hee. According to Barbara Geddes, there are seven typologies of authoritarian regimes: dominant party regimes, military regime, personalist regimes, monarchies, oligarchic regimes, indirect military regimes, or hybrids of the first three. Subtypes of authoritarian regimes identified by Linz are corporatist or organic-statistic, racial and ethnic "democracy" and post-totalitarian. Corporatist authoritarian regimes "are those in which corporatism institutions are used extensively by the state to coopt and demobilize powerful interest groups." This type has been studied most extensively in Latin America. Racial and ethnic "democracies" are those in which "certain racial or ethnic groups enjoy full democratic rights while others are largely or entirely denied those rights", such as in South Africa under apartheid. Post-totalitarian authoritarian regimes are those in which totalitarian institutions (such as the party, secret police and state-controlled mass media) remain, but where "ideological orthodoxy has declined in favor of routinization, repression has declined, the state's top leadership is less personalized and more secure, and the level of mass mobilization has declined substantially." Examples include the Russian Federation and Soviet Eastern Bloc states in the mid-1980s. The post-Mao Zedong People's Republic of China was viewed as post-totalitarian in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a limited degree of increase in pluralism and civil society. however, in the 2010s, particularly after Xi Jinping succeeded as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and rose to power in 2012, Chinese state repression sharply increased, aided by digital control and mass surveillance. Authoritarian regimes are also sometimes subcategorized by whether they are more personalistic or populist. Personalistic authoritarian regimes are characterized by arbitrary rule and authority exercised "mainly through patronage networks and coercion rather than through institutions and formal rules." Personalistic authoritarian regimes have been seen in post-colonial Africa. By contrast, populist authoritarian regimes "are mobilizational regimes in which a strong, charismatic, manipulative leader rules through a coalition involving key lower-class groups." Examples include Argentina under Juan Perón, Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. A typology of authoritarian regimes by political scientists Brian Lai and Dan Slater includes four categories: machine (oligarchic party dictatorships); bossism (autocratic party dictatorships); juntas (oligarchic military dictatorships); and strongman (autocratic military dictatorships). Lai and Slater argue that single-party regimes are better than military regimes at developing institutions (e.g. mass mobilization, patronage networks and coordination of elites) that are effective at continuing the regime's incumbency and diminishing domestic challengers; Lai and Slater also argue that military regimes more often initiate military conflicts or undertake other "desperate measures" to maintain control as compared to single-party regimes. John Duckitt suggests a link between authoritarianism and collectivism, asserting that both stand in opposition to individualism. Duckitt writes that both authoritarianism and collectivism submerge individual rights and goals to group goals, expectations and conformities. According to Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, authoritarian regimes that are created in social revolutions are far more durable than other kinds of authoritarian regimes. While the existence of left-wing authoritarianism as a psychological construct has been criticised, a study found evidence for both left-wing and right-wing authoritarianism. Authoritarianism and democracy Authoritarianism and democracy are not necessarily fundamental opposites and may be thought of as poles at opposite ends of a scale, so that it is possible for some democracies to possess authoritarian elements, and for an authoritarian system to have democratic elements. Authoritarian regimes may also be partly responsive to citizen grievances, although this is generally only regarding grievances that do not undermine the stability of the regime. An illiberal democracy, or procedural democracy, is distinguished from liberal democracy, or substantive democracy, in that illiberal democracies lack features such as the rule of law, protections for minority groups, an independent judiciary and the real separation of powers. A further distinction that liberal democracies have rarely made war with one another; research has extended the theory and finds that more democratic countries tend to have few wars (sometimes called militarized interstate disputes) causing fewer battle deaths with one another and that democracies have far fewer civil wars. Research shows that the democratic nations have much less democide or murder by government. Those were also moderately developed nations before applying liberal democratic policies. Research by the World Bank suggests that political institutions are extremely important in determining the prevalence of corruption and that parliamentary systems, political stability and freedom of the press are all associated with lower corruption. A 2006 study by economist Alberto Abadie has concluded that terrorism is most common in nations with intermediate political freedom. The nations with the least terrorism are the most and least democratic nations, and that "transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism." Studies in 2013 and 2017 similarly found a nonlinear relationship between political freedom and terrorism, with the most terrorist attacks occurring in partial democracies and the fewest in "strict autocracies and full-fledged democracies." A 2018 study by Amichai Magen demonstrated that liberal democracies and polyarchies not only suffer fewer terrorist attacks as compared to other regime types, but also suffer fewer casualties in terrorist attacks as compared to other regime types, which may be attributed to higher-quality democracies' responsiveness to their citizens' demands, including "the desire for physical safety", resulting in "investment in intelligence, infrastructure protection, first responders, social resilience, and specialized medical care" which averts casualties. Magen also stated that terrorism in closed autocracies sharply increased starting in 2013. Within national democratic governments, there may be subnational authoritarian enclaves. A prominent examples of this includes the Southern United States after Reconstruction, as well as areas of contemporary Argentina and Mexico. Competitive authoritarian regimes Another type of authoritarian regime is the competitive authoritarian regime, a type of civilian regime that arose in the post-Cold War era. In a competitive authoritarian regime, "formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but ... incumbents' abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents." The term was coined by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way in their 2010 book of the same name to discuss a type of hybrid regime that emerged during and after the Cold War. Competitive authoritarian regimes differ from fully authoritarian regimes in that elections are regularly held, the opposition can openly operate without a high risk of exile or imprisonment and "democratic procedures are sufficiently meaningful for opposition groups to take them seriously as arenas through which to contest for power." Competitive authoritarian regimes lack one or more of the three characteristics of democracies such as free elections (i.e. elections untainted by substantial fraud or voter intimidation); protection of civil liberties (i.e. the freedom of speech, press and association) and an even playing field (in terms of access to resources, the media and legal recourse). Authoritarianism and fascism Authoritarianism is considered a core concept of fascism and scholars agree that a fascist regime is foremost an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. While authoritarianism is a defining characteristic of fascism, scholars argue that more distinguishing traits are needed to make an authoritarian regime fascist. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a label used by various political scientists to characterize the most tyrannical strain of authoritarian systems; in which the ruling elite, often subservient to a dictator, exert near-total control of the social, political, economic, cultural and religious aspects of society in the territories under its governance. Linz distinguished new forms of authoritarianism from personalistic dictatorships and totalitarian states, taking Francoist Spain as an example. Unlike personalistic dictatorships, new forms of authoritarianism have institutionalized representation of a variety of actors (in Spain's case, including the military, the Catholic Church, Falange, monarchists, technocrats and others). Unlike totalitarian states, the regime relies on passive mass acceptance rather than popular support. According to Juan Linz the distinction between an authoritarian regime and a totalitarian one is that an authoritarian regime seeks to suffocate politics and political mobilization while totalitarianism seeks to control and utilize them. Authoritarianism primarily differs from totalitarianism in that social and economic institutions exist that are not under governmental control. Building on the work of Yale political scientist Juan Linz, Paul C. Sondrol of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has examined the characteristics of authoritarian and totalitarian dictators and organized them in a chart: Sondrol argues that while both authoritarianism and totalitarianism are forms of autocracy, they differ in three key dichotomies: Compared to totalitarianism, "the authoritarian state still maintains a certain distinction between state and society. It is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, invades private life and asphyxiates it." Another distinction is that "authoritarianism is not animated by utopian ideals in the way totalitarianism is. It does not attempt to change the world and human nature." Carl Joachim Friedrich writes that "a totalist ideology, a party reinforced by a secret police, and monopoly control of ... industrial mass society" are the three features of totalitarian regimes that distinguish them from other autocracies. Greg Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, argues "political passivity and civic disengagement" are "key features" of authoritarianism, while totalitarianism relies on "mass mobilization, terror and homogeneity of beliefs". Economic effects In 2010, Dani Rodrik wrote that democracies outperform autocracies in terms of long-term economic growth, economic stability, adjustments to external economic shocks, human capital investment, and economic equality. A 2019 study by Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, and James A. Robinson found that democracy increases GDP per capita by about 20 percent over the long-term. According to Amartya Sen, no functioning liberal democracy has ever suffered a large-scale famine. Studies suggest that several health indicators (life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality) have a stronger and more significant association with democracy than they have with GDP per capita, size of the public sector or income inequality. One of the few areas that some scholars have theorized that autocracies may have an advantage, is in industrialization. In the 20th century, Seymour Martin Lipset argued that low-income authoritarian regimes have certain technocratic "efficiency-enhancing advantages" over low-income democracies that gives authoritarian regimes an advantage in economic development. By contrast, Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle and Michael M. Weinstein (2005) argue that democracies "realize superior development performance" over authoritarianism, pointing out that poor democracies are more likely to have steadier economic growth and less likely to experience economic and humanitarian catastrophes (such as refugee crises) than authoritarian regimes; that civil liberties in democracies act as a curb on corruption and misuse of resources; and that democracies are more adaptable than authoritarian regimes. Historical trends Pre-World War II Authoritarian rule before World War II includes short-lived dictatorships and has been claimed to be understudied. Post-World War II anti-authoritarianism Both World War II (ending in 1945) and the Cold War (ending in 1991) resulted in the replacement of authoritarian regimes by either democratic regimes or regimes that were less authoritarian. World War II saw the defeat of the Axis powers by the Allied powers. All the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan) had totalitarian or authoritarian governments, and two of the three were replaced by governments based on democratic constitutions. The Allied powers were an alliance of Democratic states and (later) the Communist Soviet Union. At least in Western Europe the initial post-war era embraced pluralism and freedom of expression in areas that had been under control of authoritarian regimes. The memory of fascism and Nazism was denigrated. The new Federal Republic of Germany banned its expression. In reaction to the centralism of the Nazi state, the new constitution of West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) exercised "separation of powers" and placed "law enforcement firmly in the hands" of the sixteen Länder or states of the republic, not with the federal German government, at least not at first. Culturally there was also a strong sense of anti-authoritarianism based on anti-fascism in Western Europe. This was attributed to the active resistance from occupation and to fears arising from the development of superpowers. Anti-authoritarianism also became associated with countercultural and bohemian movements such as the Beat Generation in the 1950s, the hippies in the 1960s and punks in the 1970s. In South America, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay moved away from dictatorships to democracy between 1982 and 1990. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991, the other authoritarian/totalitarian "half" of the Allied Powers of World War II collapsed. This led not so much to revolt against authority in general, but to the belief that authoritarian states (and state control of economies) were outdated. The idea that "liberal democracy was the final form toward which all political striving was directed" became very popular in Western countries and was celebrated in Francis Fukuyama's book The End of History and the Last Man. According to Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., "all the new states that stumbled out of the ruins of the Soviet bloc, except Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, seemed indeed to be moving towards democracy in the early 1990s" as were the countries of East Central Europe and the Balkans. In December 2010, the Arab Spring arose in response to unrest over economic stagnation but also in opposition to oppressive authoritarian regimes, first in Tunisia, and spreading to Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and elsewhere. Regimes were toppled in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and partially in Yemen while other countries saw riots, civil wars or insurgencies. Most Arab Spring revolutions failed to lead to enduring democratization. In the decade following the Arab Spring, of the countries in which an autocracy was toppled in the Arab spring, only Tunisia had become a genuine democracy; Egypt backslid to return to a military-run authoritarian state, while Libya, Syria and Yemen experienced devastating civil wars. 21st-century authoritarian revival Since 2005, observers noted what some have called a "democratic recession", although some such as Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have disputed that there was a significant democratic decline before 2013. In 2018, the Freedom House declared that from 2006 to 2018 "113 countries" around the world showed "a net decline" in "political rights and civil liberties" while "only 62" experienced "a net improvement." Its 2020 report marked the fourteenth consecutive year of declining scores. By 2020, all countries marked as "not free" by Freedom House had also developed practices of transnational repression, aiming to police and control dissent beyond state borders. Writing in 2018, American political journalist David Frum stated: "The hopeful world of the very late 20th centurythe world of NAFTA and an expanding NATO; of the World Wide Web 1.0 and liberal interventionism; of the global spread of democracy under leaders such as Václav Havel and Nelson Mandelanow looks battered and delusive." Michael Ignatieff wrote that Fukuyama's idea of liberalism vanquishing authoritarianism "now looks like a quaint artifact of a vanished unipolar moment" and Fukuyama himself expressed concern. By 2018, only one Arab Spring uprising (that in Tunisia) resulted in a transition to constitutional democratic governance and a "resurgence of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism" in the region was dubbed the Arab Winter. Various explanations have been offered for the new spread of authoritarianism. They include the downside of globalization, and the subsequent rise of populism and neo-nationalism, and the success of the Beijing Consensus, i.e. the authoritarian model of the People's Republic of China. In countries such as the United States, factors blamed for the growth of authoritarianism include the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and slower real wage growth as well as social media's elimination of so-called "gatekeepers" of knowledge – the equivalent of disintermediation in economics – so that a large fraction of the population considers to be opinion what were once "viewed as verifiable facts" – including everything from the danger of global warming to the preventing the spread of disease through vaccination – and considers to be fact what are actually only unproven fringe opinions. In United States politics, white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi skinheads, and adherents of the Christian Identity, ideology have long operated as a loose network. In the internet age, far-right extremists throughout the U.S. and much of the West have consolidated further into a movement known as the Alt-Right, which has inspired numerous terrorist attacks while at the same time increasing the mainstream appeal of white supremacism. According to Azani et al.:The current resurgence of far-right ideology may be explained by a variety of factors, primarily, the strategic adjustment of white supremacists to soften overtly racist rhetoric in order to appeal to a wider audience. This new discourse attempts to normalize white supremacy, developing intellectual and theoretical foundations for racism based on the notion that the white race is at risk of eradication, threatened by the growing population of immigrants and people of colour. The pre-existing, offensive white supremacist, fascist and neo-Nazi ideas that drove the white power movement of the twentieth century were thus rebranded through a new innocuous defensive frame of white victimhood. As such, the new strategy of racist rhetoric has allowed the movement to co-opt mainstream political debates surrounding immigration and globalization, drawing large audiences through a deliberate obfuscation of the underlying ideology.Far-right extremism has played a key role in promoting the Great Replacement and White genocide conspiracy theories, and an "acceleration" of racial conflict through violent means such as assassinations, murders, terrorist attacks, and societal collapse in order to achieve the building of a white ethnostate. While many contemporary extreme far-right groups eschew the hierarchical structure of other authoritarian political organizations, they often explicitly promote cultural authoritarianism alongside xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, homophobia and misogyny, as well as authoritarian government interventions against perceived societal problems. Examples There is no one consensus definition of authoritarianism, but several annual measurements are attempted, including Freedom House's annual Freedom in the World report. Some countries such as Venezuela, among others, that are currently or historically recognized as authoritarian did not become authoritarian upon taking power or fluctuated between an authoritarian, flawed democracy, and hybrid regime due to periods of democratic backsliding or democratization. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia are often regarded as the most infamous examples of "totalitarian" systems. Some countries such as China and various fascist regimes have also been characterized as totalitarian, with some periods being depicted as more authoritarian, or totalitarian, than others. Current States characterized as authoritarian, are typically not rated as democracies by The Economist Democracy Index, as 'free' by Freedom House's Freedom in the World index and do not reach a high score at V-Dem Democracy Indices. Contemporary examples of totalitarian states include the Syrian Arab Republic and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. See also Absolute monarchy Authoritarian capitalism Authoritarian conservatism Authoritarian socialism Autocracy Criticism of democracy Dictator Left-wing dictatorship Managed democracy Right-wing dictatorship U.S. policy toward authoritarian governments References Citations Bibliography Linz, Juan J. (1964). "An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain". In Allard, Eric; Littunen, Yrjo. Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems. Helsinki: Academic Bookstore. Further reading Frantz; Erica; Geddes, Barbara; Wrights, Joseph (2018). How Dictatorships Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . External links Authority Political culture Political theories Social theories

Citizens' assembly

A citizens' assembly is a group of people selected by lottery from the general population to deliberate on important public questions so as to exert an influence. Other types of deliberative mini-publics include citizens' jury, citizens' panel, people's panel, people's jury, policy jury, consensus conference and citizens' convention. A citizens' assembly uses elements of a jury to create public policy. Its members form a representative cross-section of the public, and are provided with time, resources and a broad range of viewpoints to learn deeply about an issue. Through skilled facilitation, the assembly members weigh trade-offs and work to find common ground on a shared set of recommendations. Citizens' assemblies can be more representative and deliberative than public engagement, polls, legislatures or ballot initiatives. They seek quality of participation over quantity. They also have added advantages in issues where politicians have a conflict of interest, such as initiatives that will not show benefits before the next election or decisions that impact the types of income politicians can receive. They also are particularly well-suited to complex issues with trade-offs and values-driven dilemmas. With Athenian democracy as the most famous government to use sortition, theorists and politicians have used citizens' assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy in a variety of modern contexts. The OECD has found their use increasing since 2010. Defining features Membership Achieving a sufficiently inclusive and representative group of everyday people helps ensure that the assembly reflects political equality and the diversity of a community. Some of the components are described below. Selection Assembly members are most often selected through a two-stage process called sortition. In a first instance, a large number of invitations are sent from the convening authority at random (often around 10,000-30,000). The principle is that everybody should have an equal chance of being selected in the first place. Amongst everybody who responds positively to this invitation, there is a second lottery process, this time ensuring that the final group broadly reflects the community in regards to certain criteria such as gender, age, geographic, and socio-economic status, amongst others. This is called stratification – a technique that is also used in opinion polls. Random selection in governance (known as sortition) has historical significance and the earliest known instances include the Athenian democracy and various European communities. Size The size of a citizens' assembly should ideally be large enough to capture a representative cross-section of the population. The size depends on the purpose, demographics, and population size of the community. Assemblies typically consist of between 50 and 200 citizens. Turnover Regular turnover of participants is common. This can help to maintain viewpoint diversity in the long term and avoid sorting the assembly into in-groups and out-groups that could bias the result, become homogenous or get captured by private interests. Functions In general, the purpose is to have an influence on public decision making. The function of a citizen's assembly has no a priori limits. Though assemblies are sometimes limited in scope, the purpose of an assembly can vary widely. Modern assemblies have tended to propose rather than directly enact public policy changes due to constrictions in place by most constitutions. Assembly proposals in those systems are then enacted (or not) by the corresponding authority. Sometimes a proposal is sent to the general electorate as a referendum. Deliberation A key component of assemblies is their deliberative nature. Deliberation allows members to reflect on their values and weigh new information in dialogue with subject-matter experts and their peers. By incorporating the views, information and arguments of experts and then asking the participants to engage in collaborative discussion, assemblies aim to enable the participants to educate themselves and produce a vote or result representative of the public interest. Parkinson argues that the intent of deliberation is to "replace power plays and political tantrums with 'the mild voice of reason. Deliberation attempts to marry procedural effectiveness with substantive outcomes. Parkinson continues that the process reframes "political legitimacy" as involving "not just doing things right, but doing the right things". This view contrasts with the purely procedural account of legitimacy, of which Rawls says "there is a correct or fair procedure such that the outcome is likewise correct or fair, whatever it is, provided the procedure has been followed properly." While deliberation is itself a procedure, it deliberately incorporates factual information, and thus broadens the consideration of legitimacy. Agenda-setting Agenda-setting refers to establishing a plan for the substantive issues that the assembly is to consider. In major examples of assemblies, such as those in British Columbia and Ontario, the legislature set the agenda before the assemblies were convened. However, Dahl asserts that final control over agendas is an essential component of an ideal democracy: "the body of citizens...should have the exclusive control to determine what matters are or are not to be decided." Today, agenda-setting is a component of the ongoing citizens' assemblies in Ostbelgien (the Germany-Speaking Community of Belgium), Paris, and the Brussels Citizens' Assembly on Climate. Briefing Materials Briefing materials should be balanced, diverse and accurate. One approach is to have an advisory committee of randomly selected from the population to set the rules and procedures without undue influence by government officials. Guardrails Especially when juries or assemblies have more than advisory powers, the checks and balances grow to ensure that those participating can't make unilateral decisions or concentrate power. In Athenian democracy, for example, this meant a complex array of carrots and sticks as guardrails that successfully blunted the temptation of corruption. Étienne Chouard argues that in large part because elected politicians wrote the constitutions, that governments that use elections have far fewer guardrails in place than those based largely on sortition. Some worry that Assemblies might not provide the same accountability as elections to prevent members from engaging in inappropriate behavior. Pierre Étienne Vandamme points to other methods of accountability (including from separate Citizens' assemblies) and the benefits of being able to vote one's conscious and not be subject to the same external pressures as elected politicians. Assemblies can also provide a check on elected officials by setting and enforcing the rules governing them, instead of politicians self-policing. Decision At some point, the assembly concludes its deliberations and offers conclusions and recommendations. This is typically done in a voting process such as through the use of secret ballots to help keep citizens from becoming public figures and able to vote their conscience. Application Étienne Chouard argues that elected officials have a conflict-of-interest when it comes to creating the rules by which power is distributed in a democracy, such as in drafting constitutions. He argues for sortition (e.g. Citizens' assemblies) as ideal for this type of decision-making. An OECD report also argues that issues whose benefits may not be felt before the next election cycle are especially suited for deliberative mini-publics. Andrew Anthony believes Citizens' Assemblies would be useful for specific cases, but worries that with more complex issues that juries (or in this case assemblies) would not outperform elected officials. Jamie Susskind disagrees, arguing that complex issues with real trade-offs are better for a deliberative body of citizens leaving it to political or industrial elites. He also argues that values-driven dilemmas represent a particularly good opportunity for deliberative mini-publics. History Modern examples Assemblies in modern times mostly send recommendations to politicians or voters for approval. For randomly-selected bodies with decision-making power, some examples can be found in ancient Athens, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence and juries in the United States. The OECD identified 733 assemblies from 1979-2023. The OECD also documented the growth of permanent assemblies starting in 2010. Claudia Chwalisz discusses eight ways that deliberative democracy has been institutionalised. Global Assembly The Global Assembly was organized in 2021 to coincide with the COP26 in Glasgow in October–November 2021. It is the first body that has attempted to make a claim to represent the democratic wishes of the global population as a whole. Belgium The G1000 is a donation-funded initiative launched in 2011 by David Van Reybrouck with an online survey to identify issues. 700 participants came together for a day to deliberate in Brussels. First modern permanent assembly In September 2019, the German-speaking region in Belgium launched the first ongoing citizens' assembly since the renaissance. The body shares powers in the legislature with an elected body. The citizens' assembly has two bodies: the Bürgerrat meets monthly and has 24 members serving for 18 months and they set the agenda for another randomly selected body of less than 50 people who decide on issues during 3 weekends over 3 months. Brussels and Wallonia have since created permanent advisory citizens' assemblies. Canada Pioneering citizens' assemblies proposed changes to the electoral systems of British Columbia in 2004 and Ontario in 2006. While the recommendations of these assemblies did not garner the 60% of votes necessary in follow-up referendums, they inspired more deliberative assemblies in Canada and around the world, even helping to popularize the term "Citizens' Assembly." Denmark Johs Grundahl discusses Denmark as a major hotspot of consensus conferences in the 1980s and one of the earliest attempts by policymakers to include the lay public's opinions in their decision-making through public engagement. The purpose of consensus conferences is to "qualify people's attitudes, inasmuch as they are given all the information they require until they are ready to assess a given technology" and the resulting product may look different from that of other types of assemblies due to the need to reach consensus. Consensus conferences are generally deemed suitable for topics that are socially relevant and/or that require public support. Participants are randomly selected from a group of citizens who are invited to apply. Invitees are members of the lay public who have no specific knowledge of the issue. The resulting panel attempts to be demographically representative. Panel members participate in two preparatory weekends and are given material prepared by a communicator to gain a basic understanding of the topic. The panel then participates in a 4-day conference. The panel participates in a Q&A session with experts, where they hear opposing views. Members then prepare a final document summarizing their views and recommendations. On the final day, the panel then discusses their final document with policy- and decision-makers. France France hosted a Citizens Convention on Climate in 2019 and 2020, where 150 randomly selected citizens made recommendations to elected officials on environmental policies. France hosted another convention on the end of life concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2022 and 2023 to advise the French parliament in coordination with a consultative legislative assembly, which some worry will dilute the process. This process had 170 participants. Germany Since the 1980s, local and regional governments in Germany increasingly experimented with consultative bodies drawn from randomly-selected citizens. One of the variations that originated in Germany and has inspired similar experiments elsewhere is known as planning cells, where one or more cohorts of randomly-selected citizens go through a process of hearing from speakers and deliberating on an issue in order to efficiently get more representative and deliberative input from a population. Ireland After the Irish financial crisis beginning in 2008, an assembly was among various proposals for political reform. The subsequent Fine Gael–Labour government's programme included a "Constitutional Convention" comprising a chairperson nominated by the Taoiseach, 33 legislators nominated by political parties, and 67 citizens selected to be demographically representative. It met from 2012 to 2014, discussing six issues specified by the government and then two assembly-selected issues. It issued nine reports, recommending constitutional amendments and other changes to statute law and legislative practice. The government put two of the eighteen proposals that needed a referendum on the 2015 ballot, while some of the others were able to be implemented. The 2015 Irish Constitutional Referendums saw gay marriage legalized. The Fine Gael–independent minority government formed after the 2016 general election established an assembly in July 2016 "without participation by politicians, and with a mandate to look at a limited number of key issues over an extended time period." Netherlands Held in 2006 and composed of 143 randomly-selected Dutch citizens, the Burgerforum Kiesstelsel was tasked with examining options for electoral reform. On December 14, 2006, the Burgerforum presented its final report to a minister of the outgoing People's Party (VVD). A response to the report was delivered in April 2008, when it was rejected by the government of the then ruling coalition. Tegen Verkiezingen has maintained a list of news articles related to citizens' assemblies and sortition in the Netherlands since 2018. Poland Beginning in July 2016 after the municipal response to flooding was deemed inadequate by many citizens, Gdańsk assemblies comprising approximately 60 randomly-selected residents from the city's voter rolls made binding decisions to address problems. The membership was then balanced according to factors such as education-level, age, sex and district. For example, the assembly has the same percentage of senior citizens as the city. The assembly met for several days, heard testimony from experts, asked questions and deliberated in small groups before rendering its decisions. Assembly meetings were described by some as calm and enjoyable. United Kingdom The People's Parliament was a program run on TV in the UK in 1994 that showed randomly-selected regular people debating policy topics. In 2019 the British government announced the UK Climate Assembly, with 108 citizens aiming to deliberate over how to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Meetings were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and took place over six weekends between January and May 2020, with a report published in September 2020. The Citizens' Assembly of Scotland met in 2019 and 2020 to discuss very broad themes, which some academics said lead to less tangible outcomes than other assemblies but an impressive report and equally successful coordination online. In 2021, Newham London Borough Council became the first local authority to introduce a citizens' assembly as a permanent body, with rotating members. In a 2019 survey conducted of British citizens by the Royal Society of Arts, 57% of those surveyed thought that a citizens assembly would not be sufficiently democratic because it was not large enough. Northern Ireland had the highest support for an assembly, which the authors speculated was perhaps due to the use of assemblies in the Republic of Ireland. The Beyond Politics party has called for assemblies to be utilized for direct decision-making in the UK. In 2023, the Labour Party said it was drawing up plans to introduce citizens assemblies inspired by the assemblies in the Republic of Ireland should it enter government. It has been suggested by the party that the assemblies could give the public a say on issues such as devolution, assisted dying, house building and constitutional reform, among others. The party has also suggested that these assemblies could override the government on issues for which they come to a decision. United States Oregon A Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) is a panel that deliberates on a ballot initiative or referendum to be decided in an upcoming election in order to produce a useful summary for voters. The panelists are chosen through means such as random sampling and stratified sampling to be demographically representative. This often involves paying for the time and travel of the roughly two dozen participants. While not quite a citizens' assembly according to John Rountree and Nicole Curato, they note it shares many of the same characteristics. The state of Oregon created the first permanent Citizens' Initiative Review in 2010, while pilots have been run in places including Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Sion (Switzerland). Texas In the late 1990s, Texas power companies tapped then University of Texas professor James Fishkin to run an intensive form of poll (known as a deliberative poll), where representative samples of ratepayers (customers) were selected to join eight sessions where they could learn about and deliberate on whether they would want to, for example, pay $2 to $5 per month more for their energy bills in order to get more energy from wind power and improve energy efficiency. The dramatic rise in ratepayers willing to pay more after the eight sessions has received much credit for motivating Texas' wind power boom. Outcomes Common interest Electoral reform, redistricting, campaign finance law, and the regulation of political speech are often claimed to be unsuitable for management by self-interested politicians. Assemblies have repeatedly been deployed to replace such political judgments. Fearon and separately Nino support the idea that deliberative democratic models tend to generate conditions of impartiality, rationality and knowledge, increasing the likelihood that the decisions reached are morally correct. Peter Stone, Oliver Dowlen and Gil Delannoi assert that selection by sortition prevents disproportionate influence by "special interests". Term limits could further reduce the opportunities for special interests to influence assemblies. Deliberation Deliberative democracy aims to harness the benefits of deliberation to produce better understanding and resolution of important issues. Assemblies are intended to stimulate deliberation, in which the participants can less easily be captured by special interest. Deliberative polling advocate Fishkin claimed that deliberation promotes better problem-solving by educating and actively engaging participants. Deliberation is claimed to lessen faction by emphasizing resolution over partisanship. Additionally, citizens who were not selected tend to perceive those chosen as both technical experts and as "ordinary" citizens like themselves. As happened in British Columbia, these features encouraged voter comfort with the actions of the assembly. For example, a study comparing the debate quality of an Irish Citizens' Assembly and an Irish parliamentary committee found that citizens showed a deeper cognitive grasp of the subject matter at stake (abortion). Consensus conferences have the potential to make individuals tend to the extreme in their opinions, i.e. citizens essentially rally around their own views in the presence of opposing views. However, Fishkin responded that this depends on how the assembly is structured. Resources such as briefing materials and expert testimony are meant to ameliorate extreme views by supplying information and correcting misinformation/misunderstanding. Representative and inclusive Random lotteries have been explored as election alternatives on grounds that it allows for more accurate representation and inclusivity. A truly randomly selected group can embody the "median voter". Participants are supposed to represent the common person. Selection by lot can correct the unrepresentativeness of many elections. Successful political candidates typically require access to education, money and connections. Though elected legislators generally have more experience, they are likely to focus on their supporters rather than the larger population. Representative democracies have been criticized as not representative at all. The lack of female and minority representation in the US Congress is often cited as an example. While others lament the importance of branding in electing candidates (with recognizable last names, for example, fueling political dynasties). Money is argued to have an outsized role in election outcomes. Lessig argued that elections are dominated by money. When random selection is used alongside statistical analysis, accurate representation can be attained, although in practice, a large number of citizens' assemblies do not reach a sample size large enough to achieve statistical representativeness. Overlaying quotas on the initial random selection corrects for disproportionate ability/willingness across various groups, improving representativeness. Cognitive diversity Assemblies allow for increased cognitive diversity, understood as a diversity of problem-solving methods or ways of interpreting the world. Quasi-random selection does not filter out cognitive diversity as elections are alleged to do. Similarly, the process does not attempt to select the best-performing or most skilled agents. Some studies report that cognitively diverse groups produce better results than homogenous groups, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the wisdom of the crowd. Lu and Page claim that cognitive diversity is valuable for effective problem solving. They selected two problem-solving teams from a diverse population of intelligent agents: the randomly selected team outperformed the "best-performing" agents. Unique perspectives and interpretations generally enhance analysis. These results imply that it may be more important to maximize cognitive diversity over individual competence. Landemore argued that random selection results in increased efficacy, diversity and inclusivity. In fact, Mill famously argued that governing assemblies should be a "fair sample of every grade of intellect among the people" over "a selection of the greatest political minds." This analysis contrasts with those concerned about competence of individuals selected. Representativeness While sortition can enable a more representative group and outcome than through elections, that outcome is not guaranteed. James Fishkin argues that some important ways to improve representativeness include reducing time burdens, requiring employers to give employees time off if-needed, and adding remote options while increasing the benefits in terms of pay and power that is given to an assembly. Dietram Scheufele worried in 2010 that the selected individuals with the time and interest to join civic meetings like consensus conferences often results in an unrepresentative survey sample, especially if most of those invited do not choose to participate.:16-19 He also cites concern around participant group dynamics and how personalities have played an important role in producing different outcomes of discussions in experiments in the 1990s.:19, 24 In a 2023 blog post, political scientists Tiago C. Peixoto and Paolo Spada say that claims of representativeness vary in their assertiveness and accuracy, and that the three main challenges to representativeness include getting a minimum sample size, sampling error, and non-response. Efficiency Instead of asking all citizens to deliberate deeply on every issue every election, assemblies/juries might save voters time by only asking for short bursts of their time and attention on one specific issue instead of more frequent elections or long ballots associated with voter fatigue. The biggest potential for cost-savings stems from the wisdom of the crowd that could be less susceptible to forms of influence by special interests seeking narrow benefits at the expense of the rest. John Burnheim critiques representative democracy as requiring citizens to vote for a large package of policies and preferences bundled together in one representative or party, much of which a voter might not want. He argues that this does not efficiently translate voter preferences as well as sortition, where a group of people have the time and the ability to focus on a single issue. Participation Compared to elections, assemblies may trade shallow participation by voting on many issues for deeper participation on fewer issues. When people vote, they interact with the government and with the law. Some argue that elections and voting represent for some an important element of sovereignty, even if the vote makes little difference, and that eliminating elections undermines the consultation process that allows those voters to feel like a more involved citizen in a representative democracy. Lafont, for example, argues that assemblies undermine deliberation. She argues that this is because assemblies asking the public to accept the results of their deliberation is akin to an elite democracy. While she clarifies that "this variety differs from the standard elite model to the extent that it does not ask citizens to blindly defer to the deliberations of a consolidated political elite.... [it] blindly defer to the deliberations of a few selected citizens." Fishkin argues in turn that this model is not elite because it uses ordinary citizens who are representative of the population. Lafont rejects this characterization, arguing that people are "subjected to a filter of deliberative experience" which makes them "no longer a representative sample of the citizenry at large." Landemore responds to Lafont by arguing that while her concerns are valid, large-scale discourse is simply impossible, never mind superior. Landemore recommends making assemblies "as 'open' to the larger public as possible." For example, their decisions could be validated via a referendum. Susskind argues that mini-publics are a more legitimate form of democracy than legislatures, because the decisions are made by fellow citizens and not political elites. Fishkin notes a trilemma among the ideas of political equality, deliberation, and participation. In a body such as an assembly, political equality is achieved through a random and ideally representative selection process, while deliberation is achieved in the actions of the assembly. However, since the body is made up of a subset of the population, it does not achieve the goal of participation on a broad scale. Fishkin attempts to solve that trilemma by considering an entire deliberative society, which would constitute a deliberative macrocosm. He sees assemblies as experiments on how to realize macro-scale deliberation later on. Warren and Gastil claim, in the British Columbia case, that other citizens should have been able to "treat it as a facilitative trustee (a trusted information and decision proxy)." Participants essentially became informal experts, allowing them to act as an extension of the larger public. The introduction of the assembly, according to John Parkinson, undermined the trust and power that British Columbia political parties and advocacy groups had gained. It could also "undermine the epistemic, ethical, and democratic functions of the whole". See also Direct democracy Egalitarianism Informed consent Participatory democracy References External links Citizens' Assemblies and Mini-publics series (Open Access) (2023) by De Gruyter "Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections" Handbook (2019) by UN Democracy Fund "Innovative Citizen Participation" website by the OECD, links to resources including databases of Citizens' assemblies Democracy Democratization Juries Deliberative groups Direct democracy Meetings Citizens' assemblies

The Political Compass

The Political Compass is a website soliciting responses to a set of 62 propositions in order to rate political ideology in a spectrum with two axes: one about economic policy (left–right) and another about social policy (authoritarian–libertarian). History The Political Compass website was established by political journalist Wayne Brittenden. On July 2, 2001, an early version of the website appeared on the web server of One World Action. The creators of The Political Compass acknowledged intellectual influences such as Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno for their contributions to the field. Political model The underlying theory of the political model used by The Political Compass is that political ideology may be better measured along two separate, independent axes. The economic (left–right) axis measures one's opinion of how the economy should be run. In economic terms, the political left is defined as the desire for the economy to be run by a cooperative collective agency, which can mean a sovereign state but also a network of communes, while the political right is defined as the desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organizations. The test's propositions lead the individual undertaking the test to wonder about things like "Is military action that defies international law sometimes justified?", "Should mothers have demanding careers?", "If economic globalisation is inevitable, should it primarily serve humanity or multinational corporates?" The other axis (authoritarian–libertarian) measures one's political opinions in a social sense, regarding the amount of personal freedom that one would allow. Libertarianism is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximised, while authoritarianism is defined as the belief that authority should be obeyed. This makes it possible to divide people into four, colour marked quadrants: authoritarian left (red in the top left), authoritarian right (blue in the top right), libertarian right (yellow or purple in the bottom right), and libertarian left (green in the bottom left). The makers of the Political Compass say that the quadrants "are not separate categories, but regions on a continuum". Reception Several prominent individuals in academia and media have voiced criticisms of the Political Compass test. The academic William Clifton van der Linden says that the Political Compass uses a method called dimensionality reduction to try to make its results more dependable. According to him, dependable results is practice that is "roundly criticized" by scholars because it fails to give accurate results. Van der Linden uses scholarly sources to support his analysis of the reliability of Voter Advice Applications, such as the Political Compass. These sources include research by Gemenis and Kostas (2013) from Acta Politica, Otjes and Louwerse (2014) from Electoral Studies, and Germann, Mendez, Wheatley, and Serdült (2015) from Acta Politica. Daniel J. Mitchell, an economist for Foundation for Economic Education, critiques the Political Compass Test for its placement of historical figures and politicians, such as Adolf Hitler being classified on the left side of the horizontal axis and Margaret Thatcher's proximity to Joseph Stalin and Hitler on the vertical axis. He also expresses disappointment with his own placement, feeling he should have scored stronger on the right for economic issues and more libertarian on social issues. Mitchell disagrees with the test's placement of well-known individuals, such as Milton Friedman being rated as less libertarian on economics and Benito Mussolini being placed as far right, while Mitchell says that he opposed capitalism. He finds Hillary Clinton's classification as right-leaning on economic policy and Donald Trump being ranked as more authoritarian than Robert Mugabe, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro to be nonsensical. Encyclopedia Britannica has highlighted that the scientific basis for these models has frequently been questioned. Specifically, the Political Compass has faced criticism for allegedly propagating libertarian ideas. Author Brian Patrick Michell takes issue with the positioning of ideologies and the framing of economic freedom on the horizontal axis. Michell criticizes the political compass for placing American libertarians on the far right of the economic freedom scale, suggesting it implies economic freedom is solely linked with right-wing ideology. He also questions the accuracy of the compass's representation of ideologies, highlighting the possibility of communal fascism in the upper left and neoliberal fascism in the upper right, which he believes oversimplifies complex political ideologies. British journalist Tom Utley criticizes the phrasing of some questions on the test, finding them irritating and difficult to answer accurately. He highlights the complexity of political views and the inadequacy of condensing them into simplistic labels. He cites an example of that he identifies as libertarian Right on the political compass, placing him in a similar position to Charles Kennedy, despite their ideological differences. J. C. Lester PhD alumnus of the London School of Economics, writing for the Journal of Social Philosophy in 1996, opined that the compass is a positive tool that provides clarity in understanding political positions, particularly in navigating the complexities of modern ideological divisions. Lester described the compass as more nuanced than the traditional left-right spectrum, and specifically praising the compass for its ability to clarify the placement of libertarianism, which he argues is often misunderstood or ambiguously positioned within political discourse. Similar models Several other multi-axis models of the political spectrum exist, sharing similarities with The Political Compass. One notable example is the Nolan Chart, devised by American libertarian David Nolan. Additionally, comparable charts were presented in Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie's "The Floodgates of Anarchy" in 1970, and in the Rampart Journal of Individualist Thought by Maurice C. Bryson and William R. McDill in 1968. Reddit r/PoliticalCompassMemes is a subreddit dedicated to humorous criticism of ideologies, where users identify their ideologies with user flairs based on The Political Compass. In June 2022, the subreddit was used in a study by researchers at Monash University to predict users' political ideologies based on their digital footprints. See also Cleavage (politics) F-scale (personality test) Left–right political spectrum NationStates Semiotic square References External links British political websites Internet memes Political Internet memes Political spectrum de:Politisches Spektrum#Politischer Kompass

V-Dem Democracy Indices

The Democracy Indices by V-Dem are democracy indices published by the V-Dem Institute that describe qualities of different democracies. It is published annually. In particular, the V-Dem dataset is popular among political scientists and describes the characteristics of political regimes. Datasets released by the V-Dem Institute include information on hundreds of indicator variables describing all aspects of government, especially on the quality of democracy, inclusivity, and other economic indicators. By 2020, the V-Dem index had "more than 470 indicators, 82 mid-level indices, and 5 high-level indices covering 202 polities from the period of 1789–2019". V-Dem uses methodological tools to deal with the subject nature of ratings and their reliability. Democracy indices As of 2022, the V-Dem Institute published 483 indicators and republishes 59 other indicators. V-Dem publishes five core indices with several other supplementary indices. The core indices are the electoral democracy index, the liberal democracy index, the participatory democracy index, the Deliberative Democracy Index and the egalitarian democracy index. The Electoral Democracy Index This index measures the principle of electoral or representative democracy, including whether elections were free and fair, as well as the prevalence of a free and independent media. This index is part of all the other indices as a central component of democracy. Liberal Democracy Index This index incorporates measures of rule of law, checks and balances, and civil liberties along with the concepts measured in the electoral democracy index. Participatory Democracy Index This index measures the degree to which citizens participate in their own government through local democratic institutions, civil society organizations, direct democracy, and the concepts measured in the electoral democracy index. Deliberative Democracy Index This index measures the degree to which decisions are made in the best interest of the people as opposed to due to coercion or narrow interest groups, in addition to the basic electoral democracy index. Egalitarian Democracy Index This index measures the level of equal access to resources, power, and freedoms across various groups within a society, in addition to the level of electoral democracy. Rankings The table below shows V-Dem Democracy rankings published in 2024. Impact and usage A variety of other organizations use V-Dem's dataset in the construction of their indicators. The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators also use V-Dem's data to inform their Control of Corruption indicator (includes V-Dem's Corruption index), Rule of Law Indicator (includes V-Dem's liberal component index), and the Voice and Accountability Indicator (includes V-Dem's Expanded freedom of expression, freedom of association, and Clean elections indicators). Digital Society Project The Digital Society Project is a subset of indicators on V-Dem's survey that asks questions about social media's political status and the internet. Specifically, the Digital Society Project measures a range of questions related to internet censorship, misinformation online, and internet shutdowns. This annual report includes 35 indicators assessing five areas: disinformation, digital media freedom, state regulation of digital media, the polarization of online media, and online social cleavages. It has been updated each year starting in 2019, with data covering from 2000–2021. Similar to other expert analyses like Freedom House, these data are more prone to false positives when compared with remotely sensed data, such as that from Access Now or the OpenNet Initiative. Criticisms Political scientist Jonas Wolff criticized V-Dem for gradually abandoning a pluralist conceptualization of democracy. According to him, V-Dem has moved away from its original emphasis on the conceptual varieties of democracy and adopted an uncontested view of democracy as liberal democracy while also ignoring the limitations of liberal democracy. The V-Dem dataset does not cover some countries, namely: Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Brunei, Dominica, Federated States of Micronesia, Grenada, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Tonga, Tuvalu, and the Vatican. See also Academic Freedom Index References Further reading Vanessa A. Boese, Markus Eberhardt: "Which Institutions Rule? Unbundling the Democracy-Growth Nexus", V-Dem Institute, Series 2022:131, February 2022. Max Fisher, "U.S. Allies Drive Much of World's Democratic Decline, Data Shows: Washington-aligned countries backslid at nearly double the rate of non-allies, data shows, complicating long-held assumptions about American influence". The New York Times. November 16, 2021. External links Official website Democracy promotion Psephology Democracy International rankings Social science indices

Economic system

An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community. An economic system is a type of social system. The mode of production is a related concept. All economic systems must confront and solve the four fundamental economic problems: What kinds and quantities of goods shall be produced: This fundamental economic problem is anchored on the theory of pricing. The theory of pricing, in this context, has to do with the economic decision-making between the production of capital goods and consumer goods in the economy in the face of scarce resources. In this regard, the critical evaluation of the needs of the society based on population distribution in terms of age, sex, occupation, and geography is very pertinent. How goods shall be produced: The fundamental problem of how goods shall be produced is largely hinged on the least-cost method of production to be adopted as gainfully peculiar to the economically decided goods and services to be produced. On a broad note, the possible production method includes labor-intensive and capital-intensive methods. How the output will be distributed: Production is said to be completed when the goods get to the final consumers. This fundamental problem clogs in the wheel of the chain of economic resources distributions can reduce to the barest minimum and optimize consumers' satisfaction. When to produce: Consumer satisfaction is partly a function of seasonal analysis as the forces of demand and supply have a lot to do with time. This fundamental economic problem requires an intensive study of time dynamics and seasonal variation vis-a-vis the satisfaction of consumers' needs. It is noteworthy to state that solutions to these fundamental problems can be determined by the type of economic system. The study of economic systems includes how these various agencies and institutions are linked to one another, how information flows between them, and the social relations within the system (including property rights and the structure of management). The analysis of economic systems traditionally focused on the dichotomies and comparisons between market economies and planned economies and on the distinctions between capitalism and socialism. Subsequently, the categorization of economic systems expanded to include other topics and models that do not conform to the traditional dichotomy. Today the dominant form of economic organization at the world level is based on market-oriented mixed economies. An economic system can be considered a part of the social system and hierarchically equal to the law system, political system, cultural and so on. There is often a strong correlation between certain ideologies, political systems and certain economic systems (for example, consider the meanings of the term "communism"). Many economic systems overlap each other in various areas (for example, the term "mixed economy" can be argued to include elements from various systems). There are also various mutually exclusive hierarchical categorizations. List of economic systems Anarchy Capitalism Colonialism Communism Corporatism Dirigisme Distributism Feudalism Hydraulic despotism Inclusive democracy Market economy Mercantilism Mutualism National syndicalism Network economy Non-property system Palace economy Participatory economy Potlatch Progressive utilization theory (PROUTist economy) Proprietism Resource-based economy Social Credit Socialism Statism Workers' self-management Academic field of study Economic systems is the category in the Journal of Economic Literature classification codes that includes the study of such systems. One field that cuts across them is comparative economic systems, which includes the study of the following aspects of different systems: Planning, coordination and reform. Productive enterprises; factor and product markets; prices; population. National income, product and expenditure; money; inflation. International trade, finance, investment and aid. Consumer economics; welfare and poverty. Performance and prospects. Natural resources; energy; environment; regional studies. Political economy; legal institutions; property rights. Main types Capitalism Capitalism generally features the private ownership of the means of production (capital) and a market economy for coordination. Corporate capitalism refers to a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations. Mercantilism was the dominant model in Western Europe from the 16th to 18th century. This encouraged imperialism and colonialism until economic and political changes resulted in global decolonization. Modern capitalism has favored free trade to take advantage of increased efficiency due to national comparative advantage and economies of scale in a larger, more universal market. Some critics have applied the term neo-colonialism to the power imbalance between multi-national corporations operating in a free market vs. seemingly impoverished people in developing countries. Mixed economy There is no precise definition of a "mixed economy". Theoretically, it may refer to an economic system that combines one of three characteristics: public and private ownership of industry, market-based allocation with economic planning, or free markets with state interventionism. In practice, "mixed economy" generally refers to market economies with substantial state interventionism and/or sizable public sector alongside a dominant private sector. Actually, mixed economies gravitate more heavily to one end of the spectrum. Notable economic models and theories that have been described as a "mixed economy" include the following: Georgism – socialized rents on land Mixed economy (It can be categorized under many titles) American School Dirigisme (Government-directed capitalist economy) Indicative planning, also known as a planned market economy Japanese system Nordic model (Social democrat economics of Nordic countries) Progressive utilization theory Corporatism (economies based on tripartite negotiation between labor, capital, and the state) Social market economy, also known as Soziale Marktwirtschaft (Mixed capitalist) New Economic Policy (Mixed socialist) State capitalism (Government-dominated capitalist economy) Socialist Market Economy (Mixed socialist) Socialist economy Socialist economic systems (all of which feature social ownership of the means of production) can be subdivided by their coordinating mechanism (planning and markets) into planned socialist and market socialist systems. Additionally, socialism can be divided based on their property structures between those that are based on public ownership, worker or consumer cooperatives and common ownership (i.e. non-ownership). Communism is a hypothetical stage of socialist development articulated by Karl Marx as "second stage socialism" in Critique of the Gotha Program, whereby the economic output is distributed based on need and not simply on the basis of labor contribution. The original conception of socialism involved the substitution of money as a unit of calculation and monetary prices as a whole with calculation in kind (or a valuation based on natural units), with business and financial decisions replaced by engineering and technical criteria for managing the economy. Fundamentally, this meant that socialism would operate under different economic dynamics than those of capitalism and the price system. Later models of socialism developed by neoclassical economists (most notably Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner) were based on the use of notional prices derived from a trial-and-error approach to achieve market clearing prices on the part of a planning agency. These models of socialism were called "market socialism" because they included a role for markets, money, and prices. The primary emphasis of socialist planned economies is to coordinate production to produce economic output to directly satisfy economic demand as opposed to the indirect mechanism of the profit system where satisfying needs is subordinate to the pursuit of profit; and to advance the productive forces of the economy in a more efficient manner while being immune to the perceived systemic inefficiencies (cyclical processes) and crisis of overproduction so that production would be subject to the needs of society as opposed to being ordered around capital accumulation. In a pure socialist planned economy that involves different processes of resource allocation, production and means of quantifying value, the use of money would be replaced with a different measure of value and accounting tool that would embody more accurate information about an object or resource. In practice, the economic system of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc operated as a command economy, featuring a combination of state-owned enterprises and central planning using the material balances method. The extent to which these economic systems achieved socialism or represented a viable alternative to capitalism is subject to debate. In orthodox Marxism, the mode of production is tantamount to the subject of this article, determining with a superstructure of relations the entirety of a given culture or stage of human development. In the May 1949 issue of the Monthly Review titled "Why Socialism?", Albert Einstein wrote: I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. Components There are multiple components of an economic system. Decision-making structures of an economy determine the use of economic inputs (the factors of production), distribution of output, the level of centralization in decision-making and who makes these decisions. Decisions might be carried out by industrial councils, by a government agency, or by private owners. An economic system is a system of production, resource allocation, exchange and distribution of goods and services in a society or a given geographic area. In one view, every economic system represents an attempt to solve three fundamental and interdependent problems: What goods and services shall be produced and in what quantities? How shall goods and services be produced? That is, by whom and with what resources and technologies? For whom shall goods and services be produced? That is, who is to enjoy the benefits of the goods and services and how is the total product to be distributed among individuals and groups in the society? Every economy is thus a system that allocates resources for exchange, production, distribution and consumption. The system is stabilized through a combination of threat and trust, which are the outcome of institutional arrangements. An economic system possesses the following institutions: Methods of control over the factors or means of production: this may include ownership of, or property rights to, the means of production and therefore may give rise to claims to the proceeds from production. The means of production may be owned privately, by the state, by those who use them, or be held in common. A decision-making system: this determines who is eligible to make decisions over economic activities. Economic agents with decision-making powers can enter into binding contracts with one another. A coordination mechanism: this determines how information is obtained and used in decision-making. The two dominant forms of coordination are planning and markets; planning can be either decentralized or centralized, and the two coordination mechanisms are not mutually exclusive and often co-exist. An incentive system: this induces and motivates economic agents to engage in productive activities. It can be based on either material reward (compensation or self-interest) or moral suasion (for instance, social prestige or through a democratic decision-making process that binds those involved). The incentive system may encourage specialization and the division of labor. Organizational form: there are two basic forms of organization: actors and regulators. Economic actors include households, work gangs and production teams, firms, joint-ventures and cartels. Economically regulative organizations are represented by the state and market authorities; the latter may be private or public entities. A distribution system: this allocates the proceeds from productive activity, which is distributed as income among the economic organizations, individuals and groups within society, such as property owners, workers and non-workers, or the state (from taxes). A public choice mechanism for law-making, establishing rules, norms and standards and levying taxes. Usually, this is the responsibility of the state, but other means of collective decision-making are possible, such as chambers of commerce or workers' councils. Typology There are several basic questions that must be answered in order for an economy to run satisfactorily. The scarcity problem, for example, requires answers to basic questions, such as what to produce, how to produce it and who gets what is produced. An economic system is a way of answering these basic questions and different economic systems answer them differently. Many different objectives may be seen as desirable for an economy, like efficiency, growth, liberty and equality. Economic systems are commonly segmented by their property rights regime for the means of production and by their dominant resource allocation mechanism. Economies that combine private ownership with market allocation are called "market capitalism" and economies that combine private ownership with economic planning are labelled "command capitalism" or dirigisme. Likewise, systems that mix public or cooperative ownership of the means of production with economic planning are called "socialist planned economies" and systems that combine public or cooperative ownership with markets are called "market socialism". Some perspectives build upon this basic nomenclature to take other variables into account, such as class processes within an economy. This leads some economists to categorize, for example, the Soviet Union's economy as state capitalism based on the analysis that the working class was exploited by the party leadership. Instead of looking at nominal ownership, this perspective takes into account the organizational form within economic enterprises. In a capitalist economic system, production is carried out for private profit and decisions regarding investment and allocation of factor inputs are determined by business owners in factor markets. The means of production are primarily owned by private enterprises and decisions regarding production and investment are determined by private owners in capital markets. Capitalist systems range from laissez-faire, with minimal government regulation and state enterprise, to regulated and social market systems, with the aims of ameliorating market failures (see economic intervention) or supplementing the private marketplace with social policies to promote equal opportunities (see welfare state), respectively. In socialist economic systems (socialism), production for use is carried out; decisions regarding the use of the means of production are adjusted to satisfy economic demand; and investment is determined through economic planning procedures. There is a wide range of proposed planning procedures and ownership structures for socialist systems, with the common feature among them being the social ownership of the means of production. This might take the form of public ownership by all of the society, or ownership cooperatively by their employees. A socialist economic system that features social ownership, but that it is based on the process of capital accumulation and utilization of capital markets for the allocation of capital goods between socially owned enterprises falls under the subcategory of market socialism. By resource allocation mechanism The basic and general "modern" economic systems segmented by the criterium of resource allocation mechanism are: Market economy ("hands off" systems, such as laissez-faire capitalism) Mixed economy (a hybrid that blends some aspects of both market and planned economies) Planned economy ("hands on" systems, such as state socialism, also known as "command economy" when referring to the Soviet model) Other types: Traditional economy (a generic term for older economic systems, opposed to modern economic systems) Non-monetary economy (without the use of money, opposed to monetary economy ) Subsistence economy (without surplus, exchange or market trade ) Gift economy (where an exchange is made without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards and profits ) Barter economy (where goods and services are directly exchanged for other goods or services) Participatory economics (a decentralized economic planning system where the production and distribution of goods is guided by public participation ) Post-scarcity economy (a hypothetical form where resources are not scarce) By ownership of the means of production Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production ) Mixed economy Socialist economy (social ownership of the means of production) By political ideologies Various strains of anarchism and libertarianism advocate different economic systems, all of which have very small or no government involvement. These include: Left-wing Anarcho-communism Anarcho-syndicalism Anarcho-socialism Right-wing Anarcho-capitalism Libertarianism Libertarian socialism Syndicalism By other criteria Corporatism refers to economic tripartite involving negotiations between business, labor and state interest groups to establish economic policy, or more generally to assigning people to political groups based on their occupational affiliation. Certain subsets of an economy, or the particular goods, services, techniques of production, or moral rules can also be described as an "economy". For example, some terms emphasize specific sectors or externalizes: Circular economy Collectivist economy Digital economy Green economy Information economy Internet economy Knowledge economy Natural economy Virtual economy Human Resource Economic System Others emphasize a particular religion: Arthashastra – Hindu Economics Buddhist economics Distributism – Catholic ideal of a "third way" economy, featuring more distributed ownership in a mixed economy Islamic economics The type of labour power: Slave – and serf -based economy Wage labour -based economy Or the means of production: Agrarian economy Industrial economy Information economy Evolutionary economics Karl Marx's theory of economic development was based on the premise of evolving economic systems. Specifically, in his view over the course of history superior economic systems would replace inferior ones. Inferior systems were beset by internal contradictions and inefficiencies that would make it impossible for them to survive long-term. In Marx's scheme, feudalism was replaced by capitalism, which would eventually be superseded by socialism. Joseph Schumpeter had an evolutionary conception of economic development, but unlike Marx he de-emphasized the role of class struggle in contributing to qualitative change in the economic mode of production. In subsequent world history, many communist states run according to Marxist–Leninist ideologies arose during the 20th century, but by the 1990s they had either ceased to exist or gradually reformed their centrally planned economies toward market-based economies, for example with perestroika and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Chinese economic reform and in Vietnam. Mainstream evolutionary economics continues to study economic change in modern times. There has also been renewed interest in understanding economic systems as evolutionary systems in the emerging field of complexity economics. See also Capitalism Communism Economic ideology Economy Factors of production History of economic thought Mode of production Participatory economics Political economy Socialism Social relations of production Socialist calculation debate Superstructure References Further reading Richard Bonney (1995), Economic Systems and State Finance, 680 pp. David W. Conklin (1991), Comparative Economic Systems, Cambridge University Press, 427 pp. George Sylvester Counts (1970), Bolshevism, Fascism, and Capitalism: An Account of the Three Economic Systems. Robert L. Heilbroner and Peter J. Boettke (2007). "Economic Systems". The New Encyclopædia Britannica, v. 17, pp. 908–915. Harold Glenn Moulton, Financial Organization and the Economic System, 515 pp. Jacques Jacobus Polak (2003), An International Economic System, 179 pp. Frederic L. Pryor (1996), Economic Evolution and Structure: 384 pp. Frederic L. Pryor (2005), Economic Systems of Foraging, Agricultural, and Industrial Societies, 332 pp. Graeme Snooks (1999), Global Transition: A General Theory, PalgraveMacmillan, 395 pp. External links Economic system at Encyclopædia Britannica'' entry. "Social Studies VSC Glossary". Glossary-Cultural "Anthropology". "Economic Systems", a refereed journal for the analysis of market and non-market solution by Elsevier since 2001. "Economic Systems" by WebEc, 2007. Political economy Management cybernetics

Types of democracy

Types of democracy refers to the various governance structures that embody the principles of democracy ("rule by the people") in some way. Democracy is frequently applied to governments (ranging from local to global), but may also be applied to other constructs like workplaces, families, community associations, and so forth. Types of democracy can cluster around values. Some such types, defined as direct democracy (or participatory democracy, or deliberative democracy), promote equal and direct participation in political decisions by all members of the public. Others, including the many variants of representative democracy, favor more indirect or procedural approaches to collective self-governance, where decisions are made by elected representatives rather than by the people directly. Types of democracy can be found across time, space, and language. The foregoing examples are just a few of the thousands of refinements of, and variations on, the central notion of "democracy." Direct democracy A direct democracy, or pure democracy, is a type of democracy where the people govern directly, by voting on laws and policies. It requires wide participation of citizens in politics. Athenian democracy, or classical democracy, refers to a direct democracy developed in ancient times in the Greek city-state of Athens. A popular democracy is a type of direct democracy based on referendums and other devices of empowerment and concretization of popular will. An industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace (see also workplace). Representative democracies A representative democracy is an indirect democracy where sovereignty is held by the people's representatives. A liberal democracy is a representative democracy with rule of law, protection for individual liberties and rights, and limitations on the power of the elected representatives. An illiberal democracy is a representative democracy with weak or no limits on the power of the elected representatives to rule as they please. Types of representative democracy include: Parliamentary democracy – a democratic system of government where the legislative branch (the parliament) appoints the executive branch (typically a cabinet), which is headed by a prime minister who is considered the head of government. Westminster democracy – parliamentary system of government modeled after that of the United Kingdom. Presidential democracy – a democratic system of government where the head of government is also head of state (typically a president) and leads an executive branch that is separate from the legislative branch. Jacksonian democracy – a variant of presidential democracy popularized by U.S. President Andrew Jackson which promoted the strength of the executive branch and the Presidency at the expense of Congressional power. Representative democracies often contain political parties, which are groups of politicians with similar views who work together to win elections. Depending on how many major parties exist, a representative democracy can have one of the following party systems: Dominant-party system – a system where only one political party can realistically win enough votes to become the government, by itself or in a coalition government. Two-party system – a system where only two parties or alliances, typically placed either side of the center, have a realistic chance of winning a majority of votes. Other parties are very minor or solely regional. Multi-party system – a system in which multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coalition. Non-partisan system – a system in which universal and periodic elections (by secret ballot) take place without reference to political parties. A demarchy is a form of government where people are randomly selected from the citizenry through sortition to either act as general governmental representatives or to make decisions in specific areas of governance (defense, environment, etc.). An organic or authoritarian democracy is a democracy where the ruler holds a considerable amount of power, but their rule benefits the people. The term was first used by supporters of Bonapartism. Types based on location A cellular democracy, developed by Georgist libertarian economist Fred E. Foldvary, uses a multi-level bottom-up structure based on either small neighborhood governmental districts or contractual communities. A workplace democracy refers to the application of democracy to the workplace (see also industrial democracy). Types based on ethnic influence Ethnic democracy Ethnocracy Herrenvolk democracy Religious democracies A religious democracy is a form of government where the values of a particular religion have an effect on laws and policies, often when most of the population is a member of the religion. Examples include: Islamic democracy Jewish and Democratic State Theodemocracy Gaṇasaṅgha Other types of democracy Types of democracy include: Autocratic Democracy – where the party of the elected ruler will control the state unilaterally. Anticipatory democracy – relies on some degree of disciplined and usually market-informed anticipation of the future, to guide major decisions. Associationalism, or Associative Democracy – emphasis on freedom via voluntary and democratically self-governing associations. Adversialism, or Adversial Democracy – with an emphasis on freedom based on adversial relationships between individuals and groups as best expressed in democratic judicial systems. Bourgeois democracy – some Marxists, communists, socialists and anarchists refer to liberal democracy as bourgeois democracy, alleging that ultimately politicians fight only for the rights of the bourgeoisie. Consensus democracy – rule based on consensus rather than traditional majority rule. Constitutional democracy – governed by a constitution. Defensive democracy – a democracy that limits some rights and freedoms in order to protect its existence. Deliberative democracy – in which authentic deliberation, not only voting, is central to legitimate decision making. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Democratic centralism – an organizational method where members of a political party discuss and debate matters of policy and direction and after the decision is made by majority vote, all members are expected to follow that decision in public. Democratic dictatorship (also known as democratur) Democratic republic – republic which has democracy through elected representatives Democratic socialism – form of socialism ideologically opposed to the Marxist–Leninist styles that have become synonymous with socialism; democratic socialists place an emphasis on decentralized governance in political democracy with social ownership of the means of production and social and economic institutions with workers' self-management. Economic democracy – theory of democracy involving people having access to subsistence, or equity in living standards. Grassroots democracy – emphasizes trust in small decentralized units at the municipal government level, possibly using urban secession to establish the formal legal authority to make decisions made at this local level binding. Guided democracy – a form of democratic government with increased autocracy where citizens exercise their political rights without meaningfully affecting the government's policies, motives, and goals. Inclusive democracy – a left-libertarian formulation of democracy that includes democracy in the social, political, economic, and ecological spheres; primarily due to Greek philosopher Takis Fotopoulos. Interactive democracy – a proposed form of democracy utilising information technology to allow citizens to propose new policies, "second" proposals and vote on the resulting laws (that are refined by Parliament) in a referendum. Jeffersonian democracy – named after American statesman Thomas Jefferson, who believed in equality of political opportunity and opposed to privilege, aristocracy and corruption. Liquid democracy – a form of democratic control whereby voting power is vested in individual citizens who may self-select provisional delegates, rather than elected representatives. Market democracy – another name for democratic capitalism, an economic ideology based on a tripartite arrangement of a market-based economy based predominantly on economic incentives through free markets, a democratic polity and a liberal moral-cultural system which encourages pluralism. Military democracy -- a democracy with an elected and removable military leader, a council of elders and a popular assembly. Multiparty democracy – an electoral democracy where the people have free and fair elections and can choose between multiple political parties, unlike dictatorships that have usually one party that dominates the other parties or it is the only legally allowed party to rule. New Democracy – Maoist concept based on Mao Zedong's "Bloc of Four Classes" theory in post-revolutionary China. Participatory democracy – involves more lay citizen participation in decision making and offers greater political representation than traditional representative democracy, e.g., wider control of proxies given to representatives by those who get directly involved and actually participate. People's democracy – multi-class rule in which the proletariat dominates. Radical democracy – type of democracy that focuses on the importance of nurturing and tolerating difference and dissent in decision-making processes. Revolutionary democracy – ideology of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front Semi-direct democracy – representative democracy with instruments, elements, and/or features of direct democracy. Sociocracy – a democratic system of governance based on consent decision making, circle organization, subsidiarity, and double-linked representation. Socialist democracy – a political system which aligns socialism with democracy. This has encompassed a wide range of left wing ideologies which include Trotskyism, council communism, Leninism, social democracy, and democratic socialism. See also Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD) Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE) Communalism Corsican Constitution Democracy Democracy Indices Democracy promotion Democracy Ranking Democratic capitalism Direct Action and Democracy Today Education Index The End of History and the Last Man Four boxes of liberty Holacracy International Centre for Democratic Transition Islam and democracy Isonomia Jewish and Democratic State Kleroterion List of wars between democracies Motion (democracy) National Democratic Institute for International Affairs United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Penn, Schoen & Berland Polity data series Post-democracy Potsdam Declaration Public sphere Ratification Synoecism Trustee model of representation Vox populi Why Democracy? Workplace democracy World Bank's Inspection Panel World Forum for Democratization in Asia World Youth Movement for Democracy Constitutional economics Cosmopolitan democracy Community of Democracies Democracy promotion Democratic Peace Theory Democratization Direct Action and Democracy Today Empowered democracy Foucault/Habermas debate Freedom deficit Liberal democracy List of direct democracy parties Majority rule Media democracy Netocracy Poll Panarchy Polyarchy Sociocracy Sortition Subversion Rule According to Higher Law Voting Further types Absolute democracy Bhutanese democracy Consensus democracy Guided democracy Interest group democracy Messianic democracy Monitory democracy Non-representative democracy Procedural democracy Sectarian democracy Sovereign democracy Substantive democracy Third Wave Democracy Bibliography Living Database of Democracy with Adjectives Gagnon, Jean-Paul. 2020. "Democracy with Adjectives Database, at 3539 entries". Latest entry April 8. Provided by the Foundation for the Philosophy of Democracy and the University of Canberra. Hosted by Cloudstor / Aarnet / Instaclustr. Appendix A: Types of Democracies M. Haas, Why Democracies Flounder and Fail, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74070-6, June 2018 References Democracy

Reflexivity (social theory)

In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is multi-directional when the causes and the effects affect the reflexive agent in a layered or complex sociological relationship. The complexity of this relationship can be furthered when epistemology includes religion. Within sociology more broadly—the field of origin—reflexivity means an act of self-reference where existence engenders examination, by which the thinking action "bends back on", refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. It commonly refers to the capacity of an agent to recognise forces of socialisation and alter their place in the social structure. A low level of reflexivity would result in individuals shaped largely by their environment (or "society"). A high level of social reflexivity would be defined by individuals shaping their own norms, tastes, politics, desires, and so on. This is similar to the notion of autonomy. (See also structure and agency and social mobility.) Within economics, reflexivity refers to the self-reinforcing effect of market sentiment, whereby rising prices attract buyers whose actions drive prices higher still until the process becomes unsustainable. This is an instance of a positive feedback loop. The same process can operate in reverse leading to a catastrophic collapse in prices. Overview In social theory, reflexivity may occur when theories in a discipline should apply equally to the discipline itself; for example, in the case that the theories of knowledge construction in the field of sociology of scientific knowledge should apply equally to knowledge construction by sociology of scientific knowledge practitioners, or when the subject matter of a discipline should apply equally to the individual practitioners of that discipline (e.g., when psychological theory should explain the psychological processes of psychologists). More broadly, reflexivity is considered to occur when the observations of observers in the social system affect the very situations they are observing, or when theory being formulated is disseminated to and affects the behaviour of the individuals or systems the theory is meant to be objectively modelling. Thus, for example, an anthropologist living in an isolated village may affect the village and the behaviour of its citizens under study. The observations are not independent of the participation of the observer. Reflexivity is, therefore, a methodological issue in the social sciences analogous to the observer effect. Within that part of recent sociology of science that has been called the strong programme, reflexivity is suggested as a methodological norm or principle, meaning that a full theoretical account of the social construction of, say, scientific, religious or ethical knowledge systems, should itself be explainable by the same principles and methods as used for accounting for these other knowledge systems. This points to a general feature of naturalised epistemologies, that such theories of knowledge allow for specific fields of research to elucidate other fields as part of an overall self-reflective process: any particular field of research occupied with aspects of knowledge processes in general (e.g., history of science, cognitive science, sociology of science, psychology of perception, semiotics, logic, neuroscience) may reflexively study other such fields yielding to an overall improved reflection on the conditions for creating knowledge. Reflexivity includes both a subjective process of self-consciousness inquiry and the study of social behaviour with reference to theories about social relationships. History The principle of reflexivity was perhaps first enunciated by the sociologists William I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, in their 1928 book The child in America: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences". The theory was later termed the "Thomas theorem". Sociologist Robert K. Merton (1948, 1949) built on the Thomas principle to define the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that once a prediction or prophecy is made, actors may accommodate their behaviours and actions so that a statement that would have been false becomes true or, conversely, a statement that would have been true becomes false - as a consequence of the prediction or prophecy being made. The prophecy has a constitutive impact on the outcome or result, changing the outcome from what would otherwise have happened. Reflexivity was taken up as an issue in science in general by Karl Popper (1957), who in his book The poverty of historicism highlighted the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted, calling this the 'Oedipus effect' in reference to the Greek tale in which the sequence of events fulfilling the Oracle's prophecy is greatly influenced by the prophecy itself. Popper initially considered such self-fulfilling prophecy a distinguishing feature of social science, but later came to see that in the natural sciences, particularly biology and even molecular biology, something equivalent to expectation comes into play and can act to bring about that which has been expected. It was also taken up by Ernest Nagel (1961). Reflexivity presents a problem for science because if a prediction can lead to changes in the system that the prediction is made in relation to, it becomes difficult to assess scientific hypotheses by comparing the predictions they entail with the events that actually occur. The problem is even more difficult in the social sciences. Reflexivity has been taken up as the issue of "reflexive prediction" in economic science by Grunberg and Modigliani (1954) and Herbert A. Simon (1954), has been debated as a major issue in relation to the Lucas critique, and has been raised as a methodological issue in economic science arising from the issue of reflexivity in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) literature. Reflexivity has emerged as both an issue and a solution in modern approaches to the problem of structure and agency, for example in the work of Anthony Giddens in his structuration theory and Pierre Bourdieu in his genetic structuralism. Giddens, for example, noted that constitutive reflexivity is possible in any social system, and that this presents a distinct methodological problem for the social sciences. Giddens accentuated this theme with his notion of "reflexive modernity" – the argument that, over time, society is becoming increasingly more self-aware, reflective, and hence reflexive. Bourdieu argued that the social scientist is inherently laden with biases, and only by becoming reflexively aware of those biases can the social scientists free themselves from them and aspire to the practice of an objective science. For Bourdieu, therefore, reflexivity is part of the solution, not the problem. Michel Foucault's The order of things can be said to touch on the issue of Reflexivity. Foucault examines the history of Western thought since the Renaissance and argues that each historical epoch (he identifies three and proposes a fourth) has an episteme, or "a historical a priori", that structures and organises knowledge. Foucault argues that the concept of man emerged in the early 19th century, what he calls the "Age of Man", with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He finishes the book by posing the problem of the age of man and our pursuit of knowledge- where "man is both knowing subject and the object of his own study"; thus, Foucault argues that the social sciences, far from being objective, produce truth in their own mutually exclusive discourses. In economics Economic philosopher George Soros, influenced by ideas put forward by his tutor, Karl Popper (1957), has been an active promoter of the relevance of reflexivity to economics, first propounding it publicly in his 1987 book The alchemy of finance. He regards his insights into market behaviour from applying the principle as a major factor in the success of his financial career. Reflexivity is inconsistent with general equilibrium theory, which stipulates that markets move towards equilibrium and that non-equilibrium fluctuations are merely random noise that will soon be corrected. In equilibrium theory, prices in the long run at equilibrium reflect the underlying economic fundamentals, which are unaffected by prices. Reflexivity asserts that prices do in fact influence the fundamentals and that these newly influenced sets of fundamentals then proceed to change expectations, thus influencing prices; the process continues in a self-reinforcing pattern. Because the pattern is self-reinforcing, markets tend towards disequilibrium. Sooner or later they reach a point where the sentiment is reversed and negative expectations become self-reinforcing in the downward direction, thereby explaining the familiar pattern of boom and bust cycles. An example Soros cites is the procyclical nature of lending, that is, the willingness of banks to ease lending standards for real estate loans when prices are rising, then raising standards when real estate prices are falling, reinforcing the boom and bust cycle. He further suggests that property price inflation is essentially a reflexive phenomenon: house prices are influenced by the sums that banks are prepared to advance for their purchase, and these sums are determined by the banks' estimation of the prices that the property would command. Soros has often claimed that his grasp of the principle of reflexivity is what has given him his "edge" and that it is the major factor contributing to his successes as a trader. For several decades there was little sign of the principle being accepted in mainstream economic circles, but there has been an increase of interest following the crash of 2008, with academic journals, economists, and investors discussing his theories. Economist and former columnist of the Financial Times, Anatole Kaletsky, argued that Soros' concept of reflexivity is useful in understanding China's economy and how the Chinese government manages it. In 2009, Soros funded the launch of the Institute for New Economic Thinking with the hope that it would develop reflexivity further. The Institute works with several types of heterodox economics, particularly the post-Keynesian branch. In sociology Margaret Archer has written extensively on laypeople's reflexivity. For her, human reflexivity is a mediating mechanism between structural properties, or the individual's social context, and action, or the individual's ultimate concerns. Reflexive activity, according to Archer, increasingly takes the place of habitual action in late modernity since routine forms prove ineffective in dealing with the complexity of modern life trajectories. While Archer emphasises the agentic aspect of reflexivity, reflexive orientations can themselves be seen as being "socially and temporally embedded". For example, Elster points out that reflexivity cannot be understood without taking into account the fact that it draws on background configurations (e.g., shared meanings, as well as past social engagement and lived experiences of the social world) to be operative. In anthropology In anthropology, reflexivity has come to have two distinct meanings, one that refers to the researcher's awareness of an analytic focus on his or her relationship to the field of study, and the other that attends to the ways that cultural practices involve consciousness and commentary on themselves. The first sense of reflexivity in anthropology is part of social science's more general self-critique in the wake of theories by Michel Foucault and others about the relationship of power and knowledge production. Reflexivity about the research process became an important part of the critique of the colonial roots and scientistic methods of anthropology in the "writing cultures" movement associated with James Clifford and George Marcus, as well as many other anthropologists. Rooted in literary criticism and philosophical analysis of the relationship among the anthropologists, the people represented in texts, and their textual representations, this approach has fundamentally changed ethical and methodological approaches in anthropology. As with the feminist and anti-colonial critiques that provide some of reflexive anthropology's inspiration, the reflexive understanding of the academic and political power of representations, analysis of the process of "writing culture" has become a necessary part of understanding the situation of the ethnographer in the fieldwork situation. Objectification of people and cultures and analysis of them only as objects of study has been largely rejected in favor of developing more collaborative approaches that respect local people's values and goals. Nonetheless, many anthropologists have accused the "writing cultures" approach of muddying the scientific aspects of anthropology with too much introspection about fieldwork relationships, and reflexive anthropology have been heavily attacked by more positivist anthropologists. Considerable debate continues in anthropology over the role of postmodernism and reflexivity, but most anthropologists accept the value of the critical perspective, and generally only argue about the relevance of critical models that seem to lead anthropology away from its earlier core foci. The second kind of reflexivity studied by anthropologists involves varieties of self-reference in which people and cultural practices call attention to themselves. One important origin for this approach is Roman Jakobson in his studies of deixis and the poetic function in language, but the work of Mikhail Bakhtin on carnival has also been important. Within anthropology, Gregory Bateson developed ideas about meta-messages (subtext) as part of communication, while Clifford Geertz's studies of ritual events such as the Balinese cock-fight point to their role as foci for public reflection on the social order. Studies of play and tricksters further expanded ideas about reflexive cultural practices. Reflexivity has been most intensively explored in studies of performance, public events, rituals, and linguistic forms but can be seen any time acts, things, or people are held up and commented upon or otherwise set apart for consideration. In researching cultural practices, reflexivity plays an important role, but because of its complexity and subtlety, it often goes under-investigated or involves highly specialised analyses. One use of studying reflexivity is in connection to authenticity. Cultural traditions are often imagined as perpetuated as stable ideals by uncreative actors. Innovation may or may not change tradition, but since reflexivity is intrinsic to many cultural activities, reflexivity is part of tradition and not inauthentic. The study of reflexivity shows that people have both self-awareness and creativity in culture. They can play with, comment upon, debate, modify, and objectify culture through manipulating many different features in recognised ways. This leads to the metaculture of conventions about managing and reflecting upon culture. In international relations In international relations, the question of reflexivity was first raised in the context of the so-called ‘Third Debate’ of the late 1980s. This debate marked a break with the positivist orthodoxy of the discipline. The post-positivist theoretical restructuring was seen to introduce reflexivity as a cornerstone of critical scholarship. For Mark Neufeld, reflexivity in International Relations was characterized by 1) self-awareness of underlying premises, 2) an acknowledgment of the political-normative dimension of theoretical paradigms, and 3) the affirmation that judgement about the merits of paradigms is possible despite the impossibility of neutral or apolitical knowledge production. Since the nineties, reflexivity has become an explicit concern of constructivist, poststructuralist, feminist, and other critical approaches to International Relations. In The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson identified reflexivity of one of the four main methodologies into which contemporary International Relations research can be divided, alongside neopositivism, critical realism, and analyticism. Reflexivity and the status of the social sciences Flanagan has argued that reflexivity complicates all three of the traditional roles that are typically played by a classical science: explanation, prediction and control. The fact that individuals and social collectivities are capable of self-inquiry and adaptation is a key characteristic of real-world social systems, differentiating the social sciences from the physical sciences. Reflexivity, therefore, raises real issues regarding the extent to which the social sciences may ever be viewed as "hard" sciences analogous to classical physics, and raises questions about the nature of the social sciences. Methods for the implementation of reflexivity A new generation of scholars has gone beyond (meta-)theoretical discussion to develop concrete research practices for the implementation of reflexivity. These scholars have addressed the ‘how to’ question by turning reflexivity from an informal process into a formal research practice. While most research focuses on how scholars can become more reflexive toward their positionality and situatedness, some have sought to build reflexive methods in relation to other processes of knowledge production, such as the use of language. The latter has been advanced by the work of Professor Audrey Alejandro in a trilogy on reflexive methods. The first article of the trilogy develops what is referred to as Reflexive Discourse Analysis, a critical methodology for the implementation of reflexivity that integrates discourse theory. The second article further expands the methodological tools for practicing reflexivity by introducing a three-stage research method for problematizing linguistic categories. The final piece of the trilogy adds a further method for linguistic reflexivity, namely the Reflexive Review. This method provides four steps that aim to add a linguistic and reflexive dimension to the practice of writing a literature review. See also References Further reading Bryant, C. G. A. (2002). "George Soros's theory of reflexivity: a comparison with the theories of Giddens and Beck and a consideration of its practical value", Economy and society, 31 (1), pp. 112–131. Flanagan, O. J. (1981). "Psychology, progress, and the problem of reflexivity: a study in the epistemological foundations of psychology", Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, 17, pp. 375–386. Gay, D. (2009). Reflexivity and development economics. London: Palgrave Macmillan Grunberg, E. and F. Modigliani (1954). "The predictability of social events", Journal of political economy, 62 (6), pp. 465–478. Merton, R. K. (1948). "The self-fulfilling prophecy", Antioch Review, 8, pp. 193–210. Merton, R. K. (1949/1957), Social theory and social structure. Rev. ed. The Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Nagel, E. (1961), The structure of science: problems in the logic of scientific explanation, Harcourt, New York. Popper, K. (1957), The poverty of historicism, Harper and Row, New York. Simon, H. (1954). "Bandwagon and underdog effects of election predictions", Public opinion quarterly, 18, pp. 245–253. Soros, G (1987) The alchemy of finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ) Soros, G (2008) The new paradigm for financial markets: the credit crisis of 2008 and what it means (PublicAffairs, 2008) Soros, G (2006) The age of fallibility: consequences of the war on terror (PublicAffairs, 2006) Soros, G The bubble of American supremacy: correcting the misuse of American power (PublicAffairs, 2003) (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ) Soros, G George Soros on globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2005; ) Soros, G (2000) Open society: reforming global capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2001) Thomas, W. I. (1923), The unadjusted girl : with cases and standpoint for behavior analysis, Little, Brown, Boston, MA. Thomas, W. I. and D. S. Thomas (1928), The child in America : behavior problems and programs, Knopf, New York. Tsekeris, C. (2013). "Toward a chaos-friendly reflexivity", Entelequia, 16, pp. 71–89. Woolgar, S. (1988). Knowledge and reflexivity: new frontiers in the sociology of knowledge. London and Beverly Hills: Sage. Sociological terminology Sociological theories George Soros Self-reference

Social media use in politics

Social media use in politics refers to the use of online social media platforms in political processes and activities. Political processes and activities include all activities that pertain to the governance of a country or area. This includes political organization, global politics, political corruption, political parties, and political values. The media's primary duty is to present us with information and alert us when events occur. This information may affect what we think and the actions we take. The media can also place pressure on the government to act by signaling a need for intervention or showing that citizens want change The internet has created channels of communication that play a key role in circulating news, and social media has the power to change not just the message, but also the dynamics of political corruption, values, and the dynamics of conflict in politics. Through the use of social media in election processes, global conflict, and extreme politics, diplomacy around the world has become less private and more susceptible to public perception. Overtime, social media has become a larger way of how we are informed by the news of what is going on in the world. These new stations can ever biased about their political opinions. This also includes Twitter and Facebook of holding the potential to alter civic engagement, this holds a large effect and influences individuals toward a particular way of thinking. Social media also affects elections and campaigns. This is due to the interactive and communal nature of social media can be especially powerful for elections and campaigns. Voters often use these platforms to discuss their position and share their support. An example of this is "I voted" image can remind others to submit their ballots or create peer pressure to encourage voting Background Participatory role Social media have been championed as allowing anyone with an Internet connection to become a content creator and empowering their users. The idea of "new media populism" encompasses how citizens can include disenfranchised citizens, and allow the public to have an engaged and active role in political discourse. New media, including social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, can enhance people's access to political information. Social media platforms and the internet have facilitated the dissemination of political information that counters mainstream media tactics that are often centralized and top-down, including high entry barriers. Writer Howard Rheingold characterized the community created on social networking sites: "The political significance of computer-mediated communication lies in its capacity to challenge the existing political hierarchy's monopoly on powerful communications media, and perhaps thus revitalize citizen-based democracy."Scholar Derrick de Kerckhove described the new technology in media: "In a networked society, the real powershift is from the producer to the consumer, and there is a redistribution of controls and power. On the Web, Karl Marx's dream has been realized: the tools and the means of production are in the hands of the workers."The role of social media in democratizing media participation, which proponents herald as ushering in a new era of participatory democracy, with all users able to contribute news and comments, may fall short of the ideals. International survey data suggest online media audience members are largely passive consumers, while content creation is dominated by a small number of social users who post comments and write new content. Others argue that the effect of social media will vary from one country to another, with domestic political structures playing a greater role than social media in determining how citizens express opinions about stories of current affairs involving the state. Most people see social media platforms as censoring objectionable political views. In June 2020, users of the Social Media platform TikTok organized a movement to prank a Trump Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by buying tickets and not attending so that the rally appeared empty. As a news source Social media platforms are increasingly used for political news and information by adults in the United States, especially regarding election time. A study by Pew Research conducted in November 2019 found that one in five US adults get their political news primarily through social media. 18% of adults use social media to get political and election news. In small research conducted by McKeever et al. in 2022, they found that 269 out of the 510 United States participants had noted that they got most of their information about gun violence from social media sources. The Pew Research Center further found that out % of these United States Adults relying on social media for this information, 48% of them are from ages 18–29. In addition, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook are the social media platforms that most users use to acquire news information. Two-thirds of Facebook users (66%) access news on the platform; 59% of Twitter users access news on the platform, and 70% of Reddit users access news on the platform. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report in 2013, the percentage of online news users who blog about news issues ranges from 1–5%. Greater percentages use social media to comment on news, with participation ranging from 8% in Germany to 38% in Brazil. But online news users are most likely to just talk about online news with friends offline or use social media to share stories without creating content. The rapid propagation of information on social media, spread by word of mouth, can quickly impact the perception of political figures with information that may or may not be true. When political information is propagated in this manner on purpose, the spread of information on social media for political means can benefit campaigns. On the other hand, the word-of-mouth propagation of negative information concerning a political figure can be damaging. For example, the use of the social media platform Twitter by United States congressman Anthony Weiner to send inappropriate messages played a role in his resignation. Attention economy Social media, especially news spread through social media sites, plays into the idea of the attention economy. Content that attracts more attention will be seen, shared, and disseminated far more than news content that does not gather as much traction from the public. Tim Wu from Columbia Law School coins the attention economy as "the resale of human attention." A communication platform such as social media is persuasive and often works to change or influence opinions regarding political views because of the abundance of ideas, thoughts, and opinions circulating through the social media platform. It is found that news use leads to political persuasion, therefore the more that people use social media platforms for news sources, the more their political opinions will be affected. Despite that, people are expressing less trust in their government and others due to media use- therefore, social media directly affects trust in media use. It is proven that while reading newspapers, there is an increase in social trust, on the contrary,y, watching the news on television weakens trust in others and news sources. Social media, or more specifically news media- plays an important role in democratic societies because they allow for participation among citizens. Therefore, when it comes to healthy democratic networks, that news must remain true so it doesn't affect citizens' levels of trust. A certain amount of trust is necessary for a healthy functioning democratic system. With regards to voters in democratic elections, there is evidence that, as often speculated, the spread of social media has led to lower levels of trust in government and support for populism. Younger generations are becoming more involved in politics due to the increased political news posted on various types of social media. Due to the heavier use of social media among younger generations, they are exposed to politics more frequently, and in a way that is integrated into their online social lives. Social media's influence on financial markets is connected to the economy. Tweets posted by viewers with little to no expertise in finance have proven to have a ripple effect on the stock value of unrelated companies. While informing younger generations of political news is important, there are many biases within the realms of social media. In May 2016, former Facebook Trending News curator Benjamin Fearnow revealed his job was to "massage the algorithm," but dismissed any "intentional, outright bias" by either human or automated efforts within the company. Fearnow was fired by Facebook after being caught leaking several internal company debates about Black Lives Matter and presidential candidate Donald Trump. As a public utility A key debate centers on whether or not social media is a public good based on the premises of non-rival and non-excludable consumption. Social media can be considered an impure public good as it can be excludable given the rights of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to remove content, deactivate accounts, and filter information based on algorithms and community standards. Arguments for platforms such as Google in being treated as a public utility and public service provider include statements from Benjamin Barber in The Nation(Add Notion of Tik Tok Ban and how it was inflicted upon government relations in 2023. Also discuss the notion of false media) "For new media to be potential equalizers, they must be treated as public utilities, recognizing that spectrum abundance (the excuse for privatization) does not prevent monopoly ownership of hardware and software platforms and hence cannot guarantee equal civic, educational, and cultural access to citizens."Similarly, Zeynep Tufekci argues online services are natural monopolies that underwrite the "corporatization of social commons" and the "privatization of our publics." One argument that displays the nature of social media as an impure public good is that the control over content remains in the hands of a few large media networks, such as Google and Facebook. Google and Facebook have the power to shape the environment under personal and commercial goals that promote profitability, as opposed to promoting citizen voice and public deliberation. Government regulation Proponents and aims for regulation of social media are growing due to economic concerns of monopolies of the platforms, to issues of privacy, censorship, network neutrality and information storage. The discussion of regulation is complicated due to the issue of how Facebook and Google are increasingly becoming a service, information pipeline, and content provider, and thus centers on how the government would regulate both the platform as a service and information provider. Thus, other proponents advocate for "algorithmic neutrality," or the aim for search engines on social media platforms to rank data without human intervention. Opponents of regulation of social media platforms argue that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter do not resemble traditional public utilities, and regulation would harm consumer welfare as public utility regulation can hinder innovation and competition. Second, as the First Amendment values are criticized on social media platforms, the media providers should retain the power over how the platform is configured. The proliferation of social media has created a unique platform for communication between government institutions and citizens. By providing a massive number of people with the ability to gather information and express their views, social media has become a powerful tool for governments to engage with the public and foster dialogue. This has enabled governments to understand better and address their citizens' needs and provide more transparent and accountable governance. Gathering public sentiment on government initiatives is an important part of the policy-making process. The media's primary duty is to present us with information and alert us with important events that occur. This information may affect what we think and the actions we take. The media can also pressure the government to act by signaling a need for intervention or showing that citizens can change. Social Media and international relations In his 2014 article "The Theory of the Globe Scrambled by Social Networks: A New Sphere of Influence 2.0," Tiziano Peccia argues that the dynamics of the Cold War persist in the digital age, particularly through social networks. He notes that while Western countries predominantly use American platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Eastern nations often prefer local alternatives such as Sina Weibo and V Kontakte, creating distinct ideological and cultural spheres online. Peccia discusses how social networks facilitate both connection and division, breaking down geographical and generational barriers but also reinforcing ideological divides. He highlights examples like the Afghan Defence Ministry using Twitter for international communication, and contrasts the Western embrace of global social media with the controlled, government-approved networks in countries like Iran and China. Peccia concludes that while social networks are powerful tools for communication and political mobilization, they also reflect and reinforce the geopolitical tensions reminiscent of the Cold War era. The research paper "The Impact of Social Media in Modern Societies: Highlighting New Ideological Barriers, Geostrategic Divisions and Future Prospects" by Tiziano Peccia and Rachele Meda (2016) explores how social media both disseminates information and creates tensions between states. The study focuses on Russia, China, and Iran, nations that have developed their own social media platforms to meet local demands while avoiding Western influences. These platforms also aim to extend their reach to neighboring countries. The authors argue that social media plays a dual role: fostering communication and community-building while simultaneously reinforcing ideological divisions and geostrategic conflicts. The paper discusses how social media can enhance transparency and accountability but also act as a "society without a body," offering limited physical community ties. The impact of social media varies globally due to cultural, political, and literacy factors, with significant censorship in countries like China, Iran, and Russia, which restricts freedom of expression and information. The authors note that while social media has democratizing potential, it also poses challenges to authoritarian regimes, which seek to control online narratives. In contrast, Western countries, particularly the United States, use social media to spread their influence. This digital Cold War exacerbates ideological and geopolitical divisions, highlighting the need for international efforts to promote net neutrality and educate users on the responsible use of social media. In conclusion, the paper calls for a balanced approach that respects diverse political systems while advocating for freedom of expression and the responsible use of social media to bridge ideological divides and promote global understanding. Effect on democracy Social media has been criticized as being detrimental to democracy. According to Ronald Deibert, "The world of social media is more conducive to extreme, emotionally charged, and divisive types of content than it is to calm, principled considerations of competing or complex narratives". On the contrary, Ethan Zuckerman says that social media presents the opportunity to inform more people, amplify voices, and allow for an array of diverse voices to speak. Mari K. Eder points to failures of the Fourth Estate that have allowed outrage to be disguised as news, contributing to citizen apathy when confronting falsehoods and further distrust in democratic institutions. However, the growth of social media has allowed a growth of political participation to a whole new audience within society. This can be seen as a "kick starter of a deeper transformation of democratic practices and opportunities" suggesting that digital media can have huge influences and changes within politics but the question still remains if young people will remain politically active within the near future. The free flow of information on the internet and social media can have large contributions to open debate and an exchange of ideas, two crucial tenants of democracy. There are other ways social media in the use of politics can have an effect on democracy such as election influence and privacy concerns with data. The use of social media platforms have had crucial effects for election campaigns where politicians are competing for peoples attention, discuss what they're doing, and specific advertising. With data social media collects many amounts of data coming from individuals which can be used for political data where people can see specific advertisements. According to a recent Pew Research Center, a study conducted across 19 advanced nations found that the public views social media's role in democracy as both beneficial and detrimental. In general, most people think it has improved democracy; 35% think it has hurt it, and 57% think it has helped. With only 34% of adults in the US believing social media has benefited democracy and 64% believing it has had the opposite impact, the US stands out as an anomaly. This opinion is consistent with broader views that social media is dividing society. Politicians and social media Social media has allowed politicians to subvert typical media outlets by engaging with the general public directly. Donald Trump utilised this when he lost the 2020 presidential election by claiming the election to be fraudulent and therefore creating the need for a re-election. The consequences of Trump's online actions were displayed when, on January 6, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by supporters of the former president. Being a popular presence on social media also boosts a politician's likelihood of coming to power take Boris Johnson in the 2019 bid to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister, Johnson had more than half a million 'liking' his page (substantially more than the other candidates) which meant that when he released his launch video it gained more than 130,000 views which could have been a prominent factor in him eventually winning power. In the case of politicians, it can be said that any recognition, positive or negative, is good recognition. Using social media can be a great way for politicians to gain acknowledgment and constituents. A study conducted by Sounman Hong found that in the case of politicians utilizing social media and whether its use would increase on their individual weighing up on the consequences and if they would be largely positive or negative found that in the case of backbenchers, 'underdogs' and opposition it was likely to increase in order to gain recognition and support from the public eye where they otherwise might go unnoticed. In the 2011 Berlin state election, The Pirate party used social media to effectively attract voters and won 15 out of 23 seats . A wide range of voters, including young people voting for the first time, Social Democrats, former quiet voters, Greens, and Christian Democrats, supported them. Notably, the 18–34 age group accounted for one out of every five votes cast. In Finland's 2011 Parliamentary elections, the True Finns also utilized social media to secure victory, engaging supporters and expanding their base. Democratization The Arab Spring During the peak of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, the Internet and social media played a huge role in facilitating information. At that time, Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt and head the regime for almost 30 years. Mubarak was so threatened by the immense power that the Internet and social media gave the people that the government successfully shut down the Internet, using the Ramses Exchange, for a period of time in February 2011. Egyptians used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as a means to communicate and organize demonstrations and rallies to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak. Statistics show that during this time the rate of Tweets from Egypt increased from 2,300 to 230,000 per day and the top 23 protest videos had approximately 5.5 million views. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military coup that deposed President Mubarak, set up a Facebook page quickly after gaining power. Through this, the new regime sought control over the dissemination of information, with the Facebook page being the exclusive outlet for information Use in autocracies Social Media in autocracies enables both freedom for protestors and control for ruling regimes. On the one hand, social media represents a freedom of information that could previously be gatekept by ruling governments through their control over traditional media. This makes it harder for dictators to hide atrocities from the people, as anyone with a camera phone is capable of exposing acts of terror with ease. Gruesome images of bodies which would have previously been kept out of newspapers can now be plastered all over social media, inspiring people to act. Social media platforms can also give governments an unprecedented amount of information over the population. This can be used to track certain individuals, such as political opponents, and censor dissent. Disinformation in relation to US election Disinformation is false news spread intentionally. Though fake news can generate some utility for consumers, in terms of confirming far-right beliefs and spreading propaganda in favor of a presidential candidate, it also imposes private and social costs. For example, one social cost to consumer is the spread of disinformation which can make it harder for consumers to seek out the truth and, in the case of the 2016 Election, for consumers to choose an electoral candidate. Summarized by a Congressional Research Service Study in 2017,"Cyber tools were also used [by Russia] to create psychological effects in the American population. The likely collateral effects of these activities include compromising the fidelity of information, sowing discord and doubt in the American public about the validity of intelligence community reports, and prompting questions about the democratic process itself."The marginal social cost of fake news is exponential, as the first article is shared it can affect a small number of people, but as the article is circulated more throughout Facebook, the negative externality multiplies. As a result, the quantity demanded of news can shift up around election season as consumers seek to find correct news, however the quantity demanded can also shift down as people have a lower trust in mainstream media. In the American public, a Gallup poll in 2016 found "Americans' trust in the mass media 'to report the news fully, accurately and fairly' was, at 32%, the lowest in the organization's polling history." In addition, trust in mainstream media is lower in Republican and far-right political viewers at 14%. About 72% of American adults claim that social media firms excessively control and influence the politics today, as per the June 16–22 survey conducted by Pew Research Center. Only 21% believe that the power held by these social media firms over today's politics is of the right amount, while 6% believe it is not enough. Facebook founder and META CEO, Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke on the Biden administration and how they 'pressured' the company to censor Covid-19 related posts in 2021. Zuckerberg would go on to explain that the initiative would remove posts that made light of the pandemic. Zuckerberg said "the initiatives were designed to be nonpartisan but he said 'some people believed this work benefited one party over the other.' Zuckerberg said his goal is to be 'neutral' so will not be 'making a similar contribution this cycle.'" Algorithms can facilitate the rapid spread of disinformation through social media channels. Algorithms use users' past behavior and engagement activity to provide them with tailored content that aligns with their interests and beliefs. Algorithms commonly create echo chambers and sow radicalism and extremist thinking in these online spaces. Algorithms promote social media posts with high 'engagement,' meaning posts that received a lot of 'likes' or 'comments'/'replies'. For better or for worse, engagement and controversy go hand-in-hand. Controversy attracts attention as it evokes an emotional response, however "Benford's Law" of controversy states that "passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available". This means that the less grounded in facts a political tweet is, the more engagement it is likely to receive, therefore the likelihood of spreading disinformation is high. Twitter has become a battleground for political debate. Psychologist, Jordan Peterson, spoke of Twitter's radicalising effect in an interview conducted by GQ. He explained that for any given tweet that appears on one's 'feed,' the tweet shall have been seen by a far greater number of people than is reflected by its likes and comments. Therefore, who are the people who comment on a tweet? The people who comment shall be those who have the strongest views on the matter, the people who want their opinion to be heard. Peterson claims that this creates an environment in which the opinions that the average user sees on twitter do not reflect the views of a random sample of the population. The opinions most commonly seen on twitter tend to be those of people at each extreme end of the political ideology spectrum, hence the 'radicalising effect'. A recent study on TikTok showed how quickly users can be influenced by a small amount of content. When users engaged with transphobic material, the app started recommending more far-right videos. The study looked at around 450 videos on the "for-you page," which is based on TikTok's recommendation system. During the 2016 presidential election, Meta (then Facebook) conducted a study revealing that its algorithms drove a significant increase in extremist content interaction. These algorithms were accountable for 64% of all joins to extremist groups, primarily through features like "Groups You Should Join" and the "Discover" page. Advertisement Political advertising has been around for several decades and continues to change with social media. Advertising is a huge part of politics and can play a key factor in informing the audience. The “new form” has taken a different route through the "rise of digital media." This tool is very different from offline advertising in the way that it takes a new form such as YouTube Videos, Reels, or advertisements shown on a webpage. Political advertising can tailor to its audience due to the algorithms of our apps. Digital technology enables algorithms to track and analyze viewer interactions with media, allowing for more effective targeting. According to Statista, political campaigns spent more money on online and social media ads, (as seen in the image). In 2019, Statista predicted that $2.90 billion would be spent in 2020, compared to $1.40 billion in 2016 and $0.16 billion in 2012. While Twitter stopped political ads, Facebook and other platforms like Pinterest, Twitch, and TikTok currently have different rules. Facebook's CEO defended the decision, arguing that blocking ads for important political issues like climate change or women's empowerment could hinder public discourse. Political advertisements—for example, encouraging people to vote for or against a particular candidate, or to take a position on a particular issue—have often been placed on social media. On 22 November 2019, Twitter said it would no longer facilitate political advertising anywhere in the world. Due to the nature of social media bringing different information to different people based on their interests, advertising methods such as "Microtargeting" and "Black ads" have become prominent on social media and allow advertising to be much more effective for the same price, relative to traditional adverts such as those on cable TV. Grassroots campaigns When it comes to political referendums, individuals often gather on social media at the grassroots level to campaign for change. This is particularly effective where it comes to feminist political issues, as studies have proven that women are more likely to tweet about policy problems and do so in a way that is more aggressive than their male counter-parts. Like-minded individuals can collectively work together to influence social change and utilise social media as a tool for social justice. An example of this is in the referendum to appeal Ireland's eighth amendment. Civil society organisations, such as TogetherForYes, utilised Twitter as a tool to bring abortion law into the public and make the harms of the eighth amendment visible and accessible. The positive outcome of the referendum (in the amendments repeal) can be equated to the efforts of individuals and advocates coming together at the grassroots level to make the vote visible, as social media goes beyond the local level to create a widespread global political impact, making the issue of strict abortion laws a global one, rather than one just confined to Ireland. The strength in a political grassroots campaign on social media is the increased mobilisation of participants. Due to the fact that social media platforms are largely accessible, a political platform can be provided to the voices of those traditionally silenced in the political sphere or in traditional media. As well as bringing awareness to the campaign, social media (including Twitter) also provides a platform of conversation. Specifically when the grassroots campaign is trying to tackle a high ranking secular state such as the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland, it can be difficult to promote the campaign as the church has such influence and authority. And so can be argued that this campaign gained such momentum because of its social media awareness with voters for the movement being active and engaged on social media, with the campaign going from social media to law in less than 2 years. US election interference One of the largest, recent examples of US election interference via social media relates to the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. President Trump, after losing the 2020 election, showed his displeasure on the social media platform Twitter. Trump encouraged his supporters to protest and riot in response to the election loss. As a result, Twitter terminated his account. The 2016 United States Presidential Election was an example in which social media was used by the state actor Russia to influence public opinion. Tactics such as propaganda, trolling, and bots were used to leak fake news stories that included an "FBI agent had been killed after leaking Clinton's emails" and "Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump." Studies have found that pro-Trump news was as many as four-time more than pro-Clinton fake news, and a third of the pro-Trump tweets were generated by bots. Social media has also provided the means for large amounts of data to be collected on social media users – allowing analysis and predictions to be made on what information and advertising the user is most likely to be susceptible to. This was highlighted in 2018 when the Cambridge Analytica – Facebook scandal emerged. Data and predictions from the company were used to influence voters in the 2016 Brexit/Leave campaign and also the 2016 US election Trump Campaign. This scandal first appeared in the news in 2016 following both the UK's Brexit referendum results and the US' presidential election result but was an ongoing operation by Cambridge Analytica with the permission of Facebook using Aleksandr Kogan's app "This is your Digital Life". However, the methods were exposed on 27 September 2016 during a presentation by Alexander Nix named "The Power of Big Data and Psychographics". Nix was the chief executive officer of market-research at Cambridge Analytica. After founding the company in 2013 he was then suspended on 20 March 2018 following the release of a video in which he admitted to working directly with Donald Trump to gather data on the US electorate. In his 2016 presentation, Nix highlights his contribution the 2016 Ted Cruz campaign and how taking the focus away from demographics and geographics for the targeted ads and instead using psychographics in order to target personality traits and get a better understanding of voter demands is a more effective method of gaining votes. In 2016, one of Nix's business associates, Steve Bannon, left the company to take over the campaign of Donald Trump and as a result of the video leak which lost Nix his job it is largely believed he had direct influence too. As well as this, Cambridge Analytica staff were also heavily involved in the Vote-Leave campaign for the 2016 Brexit referendum. As a result of an organisation specialised in targeted ads being involved in two populist campaigns that produced shock results, many point out as a potential threat to democracy. But this is not the only example of potential election interference using social media. November 1, 2015, Rodrigo Duterte was announced as president of Philippines after being 'the first person to make the full use of the power of social media'. Facebook had made an astonishing rise since the previous election and Duterte saw this as an opportunity to get social media influencers to promote his party and create viral content, further showing the power social media can have over democracy. On 18 May 2017, Time had reported that the US Congress was investigating CA in connection with Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. The report alleges that CA may have coordinated the spread of Russian propaganda using its microtargeting capabilities. In 2018, following disclosures that the company had improperly used the personal information of over 50 million Facebook users while working on Trump's presidential campaign, The Times of Israel reported that the company had used what Nix had called "intelligence gathering" from British and Israeli companies as part of their efforts to influence the election results in Trump's favor. This was the work of one company and regulation may be able to prevent this in the future, but social media is now a medium that makes this kind of interference possible. Election results In October 2020, Twitter announced its new policy that candidates will be forbidden to claim victory until their election win has been credibly projected by news outlets or officially certified. Impact on elections Social media has a profound effect on elections. Oftentimes, social media compounds with the mass media networks such as cable television. For many individuals, cable television serves as the basis and first contact for where many get their information and sources. Cable television also has commentary that creates partisanship and builds on to people's predispositions to certain parties. Social media takes mass media's messages and oftentimes amplifies and reinforces such messages and perpetuates partisan divides. In an article by the Journal of Communication, they concluded that social media does not have a strong effect on people's views or votes, but social media does not also have a minimal effect on their views. Instead, social media creates a bandwagon effect when a candidate in an election commits an error or a great success, then users on social media will amplify the effect of such failure or success greatly. However, mass media plays a significant role in the electoral process, allowing candidates to broadcast their political campaigns to a wide audience. The primary goal of these ads is to capture voter attention and propagate their ideas. During elections, media can assume a different role, with social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook serving as additional way for political candidates to communicate with their audiences. These apps also have the potential to function as effective "electoral tools." The Pew Research Center finds that nearly one fourth of Americans learn something about the candidates through an internet source such as Facebook. Nearly a fifth of America uses social media with two thirds of those Americans being youth ages of 18–29. The youth's presence on social media often inspires rallies and creates movements. For instance, in the 2008 presidential election, a Facebook group of 62,000 members was created that sponsored the election of President Obama and within days universities across the countries held rallies in the thousands. Rallies and movements such as these are often coined the "Facebook Effect". However, social media can often have the opposite effect and take a toll on many users. The Pew Research Center in a poll found that nearly 55 percent of social media users in the US indicate that they are "worn out" by the amount of political posts on social media. With the rise of technology and social media continuing, that number increased by nearly 16 percent since the 2016 presidential election. Nearly 70 percent of individuals say that talking about politics on social media with people on the opposite side is often "stressful and frustrating" compared to 56 percent in 2016. Consequently, the number of people who find these discussions as "interesting and informative" decreased from 35% to 26% since 2016. In terms of social media's effect on the youth vote, it is quite substantial. In the 2018 elections, nearly 31 percent of the youth voted compared to just 21 percent in 2014. Social media use among the youth continue to grow as around 90 percent of the youth use at least one social media platform. Of the 90 percent, 47 percent received information about the 2018 elections via a social media platform. The messages shared on the social media platform often include messages to register to vote and actually carrying out their vote; this is in contrast to receiving the message from the candidate's campaign itself. Subsequently, of the first time youth voters in the 2018 election, 68 percent relied on social media to get their information about voting. This is in comparison to the traditional methods of being notified to vote of just 23 percent first time voters. Furthermore, just 22 percent of youth who did not hear about an election via social media or traditional means were very likely to vote; however, 54 percent of youth who found out about the election via social media or traditional ways were very likely to vote. However, the youth are becoming distrustful of the content they read on social media as Forbes notes that there has been a decline in public trust due to many political groups and foreign nations creating fake accounts to spread a great amount of misinformation with the aim of dividing the country. When examining unregulated media, it is important to consider the potential harms that can arise from the spread of misinformation, such as hate speech and other harmful content. Social media often filters what information individuals see. Due to the algorithms of social media apps, a person will receive posts that align with the content the user interacts with. Since 2008, the number of individuals who get their news via social media has increased to 62 percent. On these social media sites, there are many algorithms run that filter what information individual users see. The algorithms understand a users favorites and dislikes, they then begin to cater their feed to their likes. Consequently, this creates an echo chamber. For instance, black social media users were more likely to see race related news and in 2016 the Trump campaign used Facebook and other platforms to target Hillary Clinton's supporters to drive them out of the election and taking advantage of such algorithms. Whether or not these algorithms have an effect on people's vote and their views is mixed. Iowa State University finds that for older individuals, even though their access to social media is far lower than the youth, their political views were far more likely to change from the 1996–2012 time periods, which indicates that there are a myriad of other factors that impact political views. They further that based upon other literature, Google has a liberal bias in their search results. Consequently, these biased search results can affect an individual's voting preferences by nearly 20 percent. In addition, 23 percent of an individual's Facebook friends are of an opposing political view and nearly 29 percent of the news they receive on the platform is also in opposition of their political ideology, which indicates that the algorithms on these new platforms do not completely create echo chambers. Washington State University political science professor Travis Ridout explains that in the United Kingdom the popular social media platforms of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are beginning to play a significant role in campaigns and elections. Contrary to the United States which allows television ads, in the United Kingdom television ads are banned and thus campaigns are now launching huge efforts on social media platforms. Ridout furthers that the social media ads have gotten in many cases offensive and in attack formation at many politicians. Social media is able to provide many individuals with a sense of anonymity that enables them to get away with such aggressive acts. For example, ethnic minority women politicians are often the targets of such attacks. Furthermore, in the United States, many of the youth conservative voices are often reduced. For instance, PragerU, a conservative organization, often has their videos taken down. On a different level, social media can also hamper many political candidates. Media and social media often publish stories about news that are controversial and popular and will ultimately drive more traffic. A key example is President Donald Trump whose controversial statements in 2016 often brought the attention of many individuals and thereby increased his popularity while shunning out other candidates. In the 2020 Presidential Election, social media was very prevalent and used widely by both campaigns. For Twitter, nearly 87 million users follow President Donald Trump while 11 million users follow Joe Biden. Despite the significant gap between the two, Biden's top tweets have outperformed Donald Trump's top tweets by nearly double. In terms of mentions of each candidate on Twitter, from October 21 to October 23, there were 6.6 million mentions of Trump and Biden and Biden held 72% of the mentions. During the 2020 Presidential Debates, Biden had nearly two times the mentions as Donald Trump with nearly half of the mentions being negative. For Trump, he also had half of his mentions being negative as well. In Europe, the influence of social media is less than that of the United States. In 2011, only 34% of MEPs use twitter, while 68% use Facebook. In 2012, the EPP had the highest social media following of 7,418 compared to the other parties. This is in relationship to the 375 million voters in all of Europe. When comparing the impact to US social media following, former President Obama has over 27 million fans while the highest in Europe was former French President Nicolas Sarkozy of over 700,000 fines, a stark difference. The 2008 US presidential election skyrocketed the need for technologies to be used in politics and campaigns, especially social media. Europe is now following their lead and has been increasing their use of social media since. However, just because European Politicians don't use social media as much as American Politicians doesn't mean that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter don't play a large role in European Politics- in particular- Elections. In the run-up to the 2017 German Bundestag Elections, a group of extremists used social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube in hopes of gaining support for the far-right group Alternative für Deutschland. Despite being limited in numbers, the group were able to publish "patriotic videos" that managed to get on to the Trending tab on YouTube as well as being able to trend the hashtag "#AfD" on Twitter. Though polled to come 5th in the election, Alternative für Deutschland won 13.3% of the vote, making them the third largest party within the Bundestag, making them the first far-right party to enter the building since 1961 In the UK, Cambridge Analytica was allegedly hired as a consultant company for Leave.EU and the UK Independence Party during 2016, as an effort to convince people to support Brexit. These rumours were the result of the leaked internal emails that were sent between Cambridge Analytica firm and the British parliament. These datasets composed of the data obtained from Facebook were said to be work done as an initial job deliverable for them. Although Arron Banks, co-founder of Leave.EU, denied any involvement with the company, he later declared "When we said we'd hired Cambridge Analytica, maybe a better choice of words could have been deployed." The official investigation by the UK Information Commissioner found that Cambridge Analytica was not involved "beyond some initial enquiries" and the regulator did not identify any "significant breaches" of data protection legislation or privacy or marketing regulations "which met the threshold for formal regulatory action" In early July 2018, the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office announced it intended to fine Facebook £500,000 ($663,000) over the data breach, this being the maximum fine allowed at the time of the breach, saying Facebook "contravened the law by failing to safeguard people's information". In 2014 and 2015, the Facebook platform allowed an app that ended up harvesting 87 million profiles of users around the world that was then used by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 presidential campaign and in the Brexit referendum. Although Cambridge Analytica were cleared, questions were still raised with how they came to access these Facebook profiles and target voters that would not have necessarily voted in this matter in the first place. Dominic Cummings the prime minister's ex aide had a majority in involving Cambridge Analytica in the Leave.EU campaign, this can be seen in the real accounts of Brexit: The Uncivil War. In terms of analyzing the role of fake news in social media, there tends to be about three times more fake new articles that were more likely to be pro-Trump over pro-Clinton articles. There were 115 pro-Trump fake news articles while only 41 pro-Clinton fake news articles; pro-Trump articles were shared 30.3 million times while pro-Clinton articles were shared 7.6 million times on Facebook. For each share there is about 20 page visits which means that with around 38 million shares of fake news articles there are 760 million page views to these articles. This means that roughly each US adult visited a fake news site three times. Whether the spread of fake news has an impact on elections is conflicted as more research is required and is difficult to place a quantification on the effects. However, fake news is more likely to influence individuals who are over 65 and are more conservative. These groups tend to believe fake news more than other groups. College students have difficulty in determining if an article shared on social media is fake news. The same study also concluded that conspiratorial beliefs could be predicted by a person's political party affiliation or their ideological beliefs. For example, those that Republican or held a more conservative belief were far more likely to believe in baseless theories such as that of former President Obama being born outside of the United States; and those that voted Democrat or held a more liberal belief would be more likely to believe in conspiracies such as former President Bush having played a role in the 9/11 attacks. 2024 European election TikTok usage by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland in the 2024 European election is said to have effectively leveraged the party’s traction, especially by gaining significant traction among young voters. According to a 2024 report by Bildungsstätte Anne Frank, the AfD’s active presence on TikTok considerably increased its support in voters between ages 16 to 24. Research by funk media group indicated that the AfD benefited from TikTok’s algorithm, which promotes controversial and engaging content. The AfD’s strategy involved posting succinct and compelling messages that performed well on the platform. This approach resulted in high engagement rates, extending their reach further. Concerns have been raised, as many AfD-associated accounts do not clearly disclose their affiliation and spread misinformation multiple times. Role in conflict There are four ways social media plays a significant role in conflict:. Social media platforms allow information to be framed in mainstream platforms which limits communication. Social media enables news stories to quickly go viral and later can lead to misinterpretations that can cause conflict. Strategies and the adaption of social media has caused a change in focus amongst leaders from administrative dynamics to new media technology. Technological advancements in communication can increase the power of persuasion leading to corruption, scandals, and violence on social media platforms. The role of technological communication and social media in the world can lead to political, economic, and social conflict due to its unmonitored system, cheap interface, and accessibility. Weaponization by state actors Social media platforms have been weaponized by state-sponsored cyber groups to attack governments in the United States, the European Union, and the Middle East. Although phishing attacks via email are the most commonly used tactic to breach government networks, phishing attacks on social media rose 500% in 2016. As with email-based phishing attacks, the majority of phishing attacks on social media are financially motivated cyber crimes that install malware. However, cyber groups associated with Russia, Iran, and China have used social media to conduct cyberattacks and undermine democratic processes in the West. During the 2017 French presidential election, for example, Facebook detected and removed fake accounts linked to the Russian cyber group Fancy Bear, who were posing as "friends of friends" of Emmanuel Macron associates to steal information from them. Cyber groups associated with Iran, China, and Russia have used LinkedIn to steal trade secrets, gain access to critical infrastructure, or recruit spies. These social engineering attacks can be multi-platform, with threat actors initiating contact on one platform but continuing communication on more private channel. The Iranian-backed cyber group COBALT GYPSY created a fake persona across multiple social media platforms and initiated contact on LinkedIn before moving to Facebook and email. In December 2019, a chat and video calling application developed by the United Arab Emirates, called ToTok was identified as a spying tool by the US intelligence. Suspicion over the Emirati app emerged because it banned the use of VoIP on applications like WhatsApp, FaceTime and Skype. People's Republic of China United States According to a report by Reuters, in 2019 the United States CIA began a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media to spread negative narratives about the Xi Jinping administration in an effort to influence Chinese public opinion against the government. The CIA promoted narratives that Chinese Communist Party leaders were hiding money overseas and that the Belt and Road Initiative was corrupt and wasteful. As part of the campaign, the CIA also targeted foreign countries where the United States and China compete for influence. According to a report by Reuters, the United States ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law. The campaign was described as "payback" for COVID-19 disinformation by China directed against the U.S. The campaign primarily targeted people in the Philippines and used a social media hashtag for "China is the virus" in Tagalog. The campaign ran from 2020 to mid-2021. The primary contractor for the U.S. military on the project was General Dynamics IT, which received $493 million for its role. See also After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News Influence of mass media#Political importance of mass media Mass media and American politics Political communication#Role of social media Politico-media complex Propaganda through media Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections / Timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections (July 2016–election day) Social media and political communication in the United States Social media in the 2016 United States presidential election Social media in the 2020 United States presidential election Far-right usage of social media References Social media Political communication

Plutocracy

A plutocracy or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. The first known use of the term in English dates from 1631. Unlike most political systems, plutocracy is not rooted in any established political philosophy. Usage The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition. Throughout history, political thinkers and philosophers have condemned plutocrats for ignoring their social responsibilities, using their power to serve their own purposes and thereby increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict and corrupting societies with greed and hedonism. "", an anglicised adaptation of the word "plutocracy", may refer to "a specifically American version of plutocracy". Examples Historic examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire; some city-states in Ancient Greece; the civilization of Carthage; the Italian merchant city-states of Venice, Florence and Genoa; the Dutch Republic; and the pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu). According to Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter, the modern United States resembles a plutocracy though with democratic forms. Paul Volcker, a former chair of the Federal Reserve, also believed the U.S. to be developing into a plutocracy. One modern, formal example of a plutocracy, according to some critics, is the City of London. The City (also called the Square Mile of ancient London, corresponding to the modern financial district, an area of about 2.5 km2) has a unique electoral system for its local administration, separate from the rest of London. More than two-thirds of voters are not residents, but rather representatives of businesses and other bodies that occupy premises in the City, with votes distributed according to their numbers of employees. The principal justification for this arrangement is that most of the services provided by the City of London Corporation are used by the businesses in the City. Around 450,000 non-residents constitute the city's day-time population, far outnumbering the City's 7,000 residents. In the political jargon and propaganda of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Communist International, Western democratic states were referred to as plutocracies, with the implication being that a small number of extremely wealthy individuals were controlling the countries and holding them to ransom. Plutocracy replaced democracy and capitalism as the principal fascist term for the U.S. and Great Britain during World War II. In Nazi Germany, it was often used as a dog whistle term for Jewish people in their antisemitic propaganda. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, found the term to be particularly favorable, describing it as "the main concept at which the ideological struggle will be aimed". United States Some modern historians, politicians, and economists argue that the U.S. was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era periods between the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Great Depression. President Theodore Roosevelt became known as the "trust-buster" for his aggressive use of antitrust law, through which he managed to break up such major combinations as the largest railroad and Standard Oil, the largest oil company. According to historian David Burton, "When it came to domestic political concerns, TR's bête noire was the plutocracy." In his autobiographical account of taking on monopolistic corporations as president, Roosevelt recounted: The Sherman Antitrust Act had been enacted in 1890, when large industries reaching monopolistic or near-monopolistic levels of market concentration and financial capital increasingly integrating corporations and a handful of very wealthy heads of large corporations began to exert increasing influence over industry, public opinion and politics after the Civil War. Money, according to contemporary progressive and journalist Walter Weyl, was "the mortar of this edifice", with ideological differences among politicians fading and the political realm becoming "a mere branch in a still larger, integrated business. The state, which through the party formally sold favors to the large corporations, became one of their departments." In "The Politics of Plutocracy" section of his book, The Conscience of a Liberal, economist Paul Krugman says plutocracy took hold because of three factors: at that time, the poorest quarter of American residents (African-Americans and non-naturalized immigrants) were ineligible to vote, the wealthy funded the campaigns of politicians they preferred, and vote buying was "feasible, easy and widespread", as were other forms of electoral fraud such as ballot-box stuffing and intimidation of the other party's voters. The U.S. instituted progressive taxation in 1913, but according to Shamus Khan, in the 1970s, elites used their increasing political power to lower their taxes, and today successfully employ what political scientist Jeffrey Winters calls "the income defense industry" to greatly reduce their taxes. In 1998, Bob Herbert of The New York Times referred to modern American plutocrats as "The Donor Class" (list of top (political party) donors) and defined the class, for the first time, as "a tiny group – just one-quarter of 1 percent of the population – and it is not representative of the rest of the nation. But its money buys plenty of access." Post-World War II In modern times, the term is sometimes used pejoratively to refer to societies rooted in state-corporate capitalism or which prioritize the accumulation of wealth over other interests. According to Kevin Phillips, author and political strategist to Richard Nixon, the United States is a plutocracy in which there is a "fusion of money and government." Chrystia Freeland, author of Plutocrats, says that the present trend towards plutocracy occurs because the rich feel that their interests are shared by society: When the Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote the 2011 Vanity Fair magazine article entitled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%", the title and content supported Stiglitz's claim that the U.S. is increasingly ruled by the wealthiest 1%. Some researchers have said the U.S. may be drifting towards a form of oligarchy, as individual citizens have less impact than economic elites and organized interest groups upon public policy. In the U.S. Congress itself, more than half of all members are millionaires. A study conducted by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, which was released in April 2014, stated that their "analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts". Gilens and Page do not characterize the U.S. as an "oligarchy" or "plutocracy" per se; however, they do apply the concept of "civil oligarchy" as used by Jeffrey A. Winters with respect to the U.S. The investor, billionaire, and philanthropist Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, voiced in 2005 and once more in 2006 his view that his class, the "rich class", is waging class warfare on the rest of society. In 2005 Buffet said to CNN: "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." In a November 2006 interview in The New York Times, Buffett stated that "[t]here's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Causation Reasons why a plutocracy develops are complex. In a nation that is experiencing rapid economic growth, income inequality will tend to increase as the rate of return on innovation increases. In other scenarios, plutocracy may develop when a country is collapsing due to resource depletion as the elites attempt to hoard the diminishing wealth or expand debts to maintain stability, which will tend to enrich creditors and financiers. Economists have also suggested that free market economies tend to drift into monopolies and oligopolies because of the greater efficiency of larger businesses (see economies of scale). Other nations may become plutocratic through kleptocracy or rent-seeking. See also Aristocracy Banana republic Corporatocracy Elitism Kleptocracy Neo-feudalism Oligarchy Overclass Plutonomy Timocracy Upper class Wealth concentration Property qualification References Further reading Howard, Milford Wriarson (1895). The American plutocracy. New York: Holland Publishing. Norwood, Thomas Manson (1888). Plutocracy: or, American white slavery; a politico-social novel. New York: The American News Company. Pettigrew, Richard Franklin (1921). Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920. New York: The Academy Press. Reed, John Calvin (1903). The New Plutocracy. New York: Abbey Press. Winters, Jeffrey A. (2011). Oligarchy. Cambridge University Press External links Documentary: Plutocracy Political repression in the U.S.A. part 1, by Metanoia Films Documentary: Plutocracy II: Solidarity Forever Political repression in the U.S.A. part 2, by Metanoia Films 17th-century neologisms Oligarchy Pejorative terms for forms of government Political philosophy Social philosophy Wealth concentration

Electoral system

An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices. Some electoral systems elect a single winner to a unique position, such as prime minister, president or governor, while others elect multiple winners, such as members of parliament or boards of directors. When electing a legislature, areas may be divided into constituencies with one or more representatives or the electorate may elect representatives as a single unit. Voters may vote directly for an individual candidate or for a list of candidates put forward by a political party or alliance. There are many variations in electoral systems. The mathematical and normative study of voting rules falls under the branches of economics called social choice and mechanism design, but the question has also engendered substantial contributions from political scientists, analytic philosophers, computer scientists, and mathematicians. The field has produced several major results, including Arrow's impossibility theorem (showing that ranked voting cannot eliminate the spoiler effect) and Gibbard's theorem (showing it is impossible to design a straightforward voting system, i.e. one where it is always obvious to a strategic voter which ballot they should cast). Types of electoral systems The most common categorizations of electoral systems are: single-winner vs. multi-winner systems and proportional representation vs. winner-take-all systems vs. mixed systems. Single-winner and winner-take-all systems In all cases, where only a single winner is to be elected, the electoral system is winner-take all. The same can be said for elections where only one person is elected per district, since the district elections are also winner-take-all, therefore the electoral system as a whole is also usually non-proportional. Some systems where multiple winners are elected at once (in the same district) are also winner-take-all. In party block voting, voters can only vote for the list of candidates of a single party, with the party receiving the most votes winning all seats. This is used in five countries as part of mixed systems. Plurality voting and first-past-the-post Plurality voting is a system in which the candidate(s) with the highest number of votes wins, with no requirement to get a majority of votes. In cases where there is a single position to be filled, it is known as first-past-the-post; this is the second most common electoral system for national legislatures, with 58 countries using it for this purpose, the vast majority of which are current or former British or American colonies or territories. It is also the second most common system used for presidential elections, being used in 19 countries. In cases where there are multiple positions to be filled, most commonly in cases of multi-member constituencies, there are several types of plurality electoral systems. Under block voting (also known as multiple non-transferable vote or plurality-at-large), voters have as many votes as there are seats and can vote for any candidate, regardless of party, a system used in eight countries. Approval voting is a choose-all-you-like voting system which aims to increase the number of candidates that win with majority support. Voters are free to pick as many candidates as they like and each choice has equal weight, independent of the number of candidates a voter supports. The candidate with the most votes wins. Runoff systems A runoff system in which candidates must receive a majority of votes to be elected, either in a runoff election or final round of voting. This is sometimes referred to as a type of majority voting, although usually only a plurality is required in the last round, and sometimes even in the first round winners can avoid a second round without achieving a majority. In social choice theory, runoff systems are not called majority voting, as this term refers to Condorcet-methods. There are two main forms of runoff systems, one conducted in a single round of voting using ranked voting and the other using multiple elections, to successively narrow the field of candidates. Both are primarily used for single-member constituencies. Runoff can be achieved in a single election using instant-runoff voting (IRV), whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference; this system is used for parliamentary elections in Australia and Papua New Guinea. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, the second preferences of the lowest-ranked candidate are then added to the totals. This is repeated until a candidate achieves over 50% of the number of valid votes. If not all voters use all their preference votes, then the count may continue until two candidates remain, at which point the winner is the one with the most votes. A modified form of IRV is the contingent vote where voters do not rank all candidates, but have a limited number of preference votes. If no candidate has a majority in the first round, all candidates are excluded except the top two, with the highest remaining preference votes from the votes for the excluded candidates then added to the totals to determine the winner. This system is used in Sri Lankan presidential elections, with voters allowed to give three preferences. The other main form of runoff system is the two-round system, which is the most common system used for presidential elections around the world, being used in 88 countries. It is also used in 20 countries for electing the legislature. If no candidate achieves a majority of votes in the first round of voting, a second round is held to determine the winner. In most cases the second round is limited to the top two candidates from the first round, although in some elections more than two candidates may choose to contest the second round; in these cases the second round is decided by plurality voting. Some countries use a modified form of the two-round system, such as Ecuador where a candidate in the presidential election is declared the winner if they receive 40% of the vote and are 10% ahead of their nearest rival, or Argentina (45% plus 10% ahead), where the system is known as ballotage. In some cases, a runoff may be held using a different system, as in contingent elections when no candidate wins a majority of the United States Electoral College. An exhaustive ballot is not limited to two rounds, but sees the last-placed candidate eliminated in each round of voting. Due to the potentially large number of rounds, this system is not used in any major popular elections, but is used to elect the Speakers of parliament in several countries and members of the Swiss Federal Council. In some formats there may be multiple rounds held without any candidates being eliminated until a candidate achieves a majority. Positional systems Positional systems like the Borda Count are ranked voting systems that assign a certain number of points to each candidate, weighted by position. The most popular such system is first-preference plurality. Another well-known variant, the Borda count, each candidate is given a number of points equal to their rank, and the candidate with the least points wins. This system is intended to elect broadly acceptable options or candidates, rather than those preferred by a majority. This system is used to elect the ethnic minority representatives seats in the Slovenian parliament. The Dowdall system is used in Nauru for parliamentary elections and sees voters rank the candidates. First preference votes are counted as whole numbers, the second preferences by two, third preferences by three, and so on; this continues to the lowest possible ranking. The totals for each candidate determine the winners. Multi-winner systems Proportional systems Proportional representation is the most widely used electoral system for national legislatures, with the parliaments of over eighty countries elected by various forms of the system. Party-list proportional representation is the single most common electoral system and is used by 80 countries, and involves voters voting for a list of candidates proposed by a party. In closed list systems voters do not have any influence over the candidates put forward by the party, but in open list systems voters are able to both vote for the party list and influence the order in which candidates will be assigned seats. In some countries, notably Israel and the Netherlands, elections are carried out using 'pure' proportional representation, with the votes tallied on a national level before assigning seats to parties. However, in most cases several multi-member constituencies are used rather than a single nationwide constituency, giving an element of geographical representation; but this can result in the distribution of seats not reflecting the national vote totals. As a result, some countries have leveling seats to award to parties whose seat totals are lower than their proportion of the national vote. In addition to the electoral threshold (the minimum percentage of the vote that a party must obtain to win seats), there are several different ways to allocate seats in proportional systems. There are two main types of systems: highest average and largest remainder. Highest average systems involve dividing the votes received by each party by a divisor or vote average that represents an idealized seats-to-votes ratio, then rounding normally. In the largest remainder system, parties' vote shares are divided by an electoral quota. This usually leaves some seats unallocated, which are awarded to parties based on which parties have the largest number of "leftover" votes. Single transferable vote (STV) is another form of proportional representation. In STV, multi-member districts are used and each voter casts one vote, being a ranked ballot marked for individual candidates, rather than voting for a party list. STV is used in Malta and the Republic of Ireland. To be certain of being elected, candidates must pass a quota (the Droop quota being the most common). Candidates that pass the quota are elected. If necessary to fill seats, votes are transferred from the least successful candidates. Surplus votes held by successful candidates may also be transferred. Eventually all seats are filled by candidates who have passed the quota or there are only as many remaining candidates as the number of remaining seats. Under single non-transferable vote (SNTV) voters can vote for only one candidate, with the candidates receiving the most votes declared the winners; this system is used in Kuwait, the Pitcairn Islands and Vanuatu. Mixed systems In several countries, mixed systems are used to elect the legislature. These include parallel voting (also known as mixed-member majoritarian) and mixed-member proportional representation. In non-compensatory, parallel voting systems, which are used in 20 countries, members of a legislature are elected by two different methods; part of the membership is elected by a plurality or majority vote in single-member constituencies and the other part by proportional representation. The results of the constituency vote have no effect on the outcome of the proportional vote. In compensatory mixed-member systems the results of the proportional vote are adjusted to balance the seats won in the constituency vote. The mixed-member proportional systems, in use in eight countries, provide enough compensatory seats to ensure that parties have a number of seats approximately proportional to their vote share. Other systems may be insufficiently compensatory, and this may result in overhang seats, where parties win more seats in the constituency system than they would be entitled to based on their vote share. Variations of this include the Additional Member System, and Alternative Vote Plus, in which voters cast votes for both single-member constituencies and multi-member constituencies; the allocation of seats in the multi-member constituencies is adjusted to achieve an overall seat allocation proportional to parties' vote share by taking into account the number of seats won by parties in the single-member constituencies. Vote linkage mixed systems are also compensatory, however they usually use different mechanism than seat linkage (top-up) method of MMP and usually aren't able to achieve proportional representation. Some electoral systems feature a majority bonus system to either ensure one party or coalition gains a majority in the legislature, or to give the party receiving the most votes a clear advantage in terms of the number of seats. San Marino has a modified two-round system, which sees a second round of voting featuring the top two parties or coalitions if there is no majority in the first round. The winner of the second round is guaranteed 35 seats in the 60-seat Grand and General Council. In Greece the party receiving the most votes was given an additional 50 seats, a system which was abolished following the 2019 elections. Primary elections Primary elections are a feature of some electoral systems, either as a formal part of the electoral system or informally by choice of individual political parties as a method of selecting candidates, as is the case in Italy. Primary elections limit the risk of vote splitting by ensuring a single party candidate. In Argentina they are a formal part of the electoral system and take place two months before the main elections; any party receiving less than 1.5% of the vote is not permitted to contest the main elections. In the United States, there are both partisan and non-partisan primary elections. Indirect elections Some elections feature an indirect electoral system, whereby there is either no popular vote, or the popular vote is only one stage of the election; in these systems the final vote is usually taken by an electoral college. In several countries, such as Mauritius or Trinidad and Tobago, the post of President is elected by the legislature. In others like India, the vote is taken by an electoral college consisting of the national legislature and state legislatures. In the United States, the president is indirectly elected using a two-stage process; a popular vote in each state elects members to the electoral college that in turn elects the President. This can result in a situation where a candidate who receives the most votes nationwide does not win the electoral college vote, as most recently happened in 2000 and 2016. Proposed and Lesser Used Systems In addition to the various electoral systems currently in use for political elections, there are numerous others which have been used in the past, are only used in private organizations (such as electing the board members for a corporation or a student organization), or have only ever been made as proposals but not implemented. Winner-take-all systems Among the Ranked systems these include Bucklin voting, the various Condorcet methods (Copeland's, Dodgson's, Kemeny-Young, Maximal lotteries, Minimax, Nanson's, Ranked pairs, Schulze), the Coombs' method and positional voting. Among the Cardinal electoral systems, the most well known of these is range voting, where any number of candidates are scored from a set range of numbers. A very common example of range voting are the 5-star ratings used for many customer satisfaction surveys and reviews. Other cardinal systems include satisfaction approval voting, highest median rules (including the majority judgment), and the D21 – Janeček method where voters can cast positive and negative votes. Historically, weighted voting systems were used in some countries. These allocated a greater weight to the votes of some voters than others, either indirectly by allocating more seats to certain groups (such as the Prussian three-class franchise), or by weighting the results of the vote. The latter system was used in colonial Rhodesia for the 1962 and 1965 elections. The elections featured two voter rolls (the 'A' roll being largely European and the 'B' roll largely African); the seats of the House Assembly were divided into 50 constituency seats and 15 district seats. Although all voters could vote for both types of seats, 'A' roll votes were given greater weight for the constituency seats and 'B' roll votes greater weight for the district seats. Weighted systems are still used in corporate elections, with votes weighted to reflect stock ownership. Proportional systems Dual-member proportional representation is a proposed system with two candidates elected in each constituency, one with the most votes and one to ensure proportionality of the combined results. Biproportional apportionment is a system where the total number of votes is used to calculate the number of seats each party is due, followed by a calculation of the constituencies in which the seats should be awarded in order to achieve the total due to them. For proportional systems that use ranked choice voting, there are several proposals, including CPO-STV, Schulze STV and the Wright system, which are each considered to be variants of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. Among the proportional voting systems that use rating are Thiele's voting rules and Phragmen's voting rule. A special case of Thiele's voting rules is Proportional Approval Voting. Some proportional systems that may be used with either ranking or rating include the Method of Equal Shares and the Expanding Approvals Rule. Rules and regulations In addition to the specific method of electing candidates, electoral systems are also characterised by their wider rules and regulations, which are usually set out in a country's constitution or electoral law. Participatory rules determine candidate nomination and voter registration, in addition to the location of polling places and the availability of online voting, postal voting, and absentee voting. Other regulations include the selection of voting devices such as paper ballots, machine voting or open ballot systems, and consequently the type of vote counting systems, verification and auditing used. Electoral rules place limits on suffrage and candidacy. Most countries's electorates are characterised by universal suffrage, but there are differences on the age at which people are allowed to vote, with the youngest being 16 and the oldest 21. People may be disenfranchised for a range of reasons, such as being a serving prisoner, being declared bankrupt, having committed certain crimes or being a serving member of the armed forces. Similar limits are placed on candidacy (also known as passive suffrage), and in many cases the age limit for candidates is higher than the voting age. A total of 21 countries have compulsory voting, although in some there is an upper age limit on enforcement of the law. Many countries also have the none of the above option on their ballot papers. In systems that use constituencies, apportionment or districting defines the area covered by each constituency. Where constituency boundaries are drawn has a strong influence on the likely outcome of elections in the constituency due to the geographic distribution of voters. Political parties may seek to gain an advantage during redistricting by ensuring their voter base has a majority in as many constituencies as possible, a process known as gerrymandering. Historically rotten and pocket boroughs, constituencies with unusually small populations, were used by wealthy families to gain parliamentary representation. Some countries have minimum turnout requirements for elections to be valid. In Serbia this rule caused multiple re-runs of presidential elections, with the 1997 election re-run once and the 2002 elections re-run three times due insufficient turnout in the first, second and third attempts to run the election. The turnout requirement was scrapped prior to the fourth vote in 2004. Similar problems in Belarus led to the 1995 parliamentary elections going to a fourth round of voting before enough parliamentarians were elected to make a quorum. Reserved seats are used in many countries to ensure representation for ethnic minorities, women, young people or the disabled. These seats are separate from general seats, and may be elected separately (such as in Morocco where a separate ballot is used to elect the 60 seats reserved for women and 30 seats reserved for young people in the House of Representatives), or be allocated to parties based on the results of the election; in Jordan the reserved seats for women are given to the female candidates who failed to win constituency seats but with the highest number of votes, whilst in Kenya the Senate seats reserved for women, young people and the disabled are allocated to parties based on how many seats they won in the general vote. Some countries achieve minority representation by other means, including requirements for a certain proportion of candidates to be women, or by exempting minority parties from the electoral threshold, as is done in Poland, Romania and Serbia. History Pre-democratic In ancient Greece and Italy, the institution of suffrage already existed in a rudimentary form at the outset of the historical period. In the early monarchies it was customary for the king to invite pronouncements of his people on matters in which it was prudent to secure its assent beforehand. In these assemblies the people recorded their opinion by clamouring (a method which survived in Sparta as late as the 4th century BCE), or by the clashing of spears on shields. Early democracy Voting has been used as a feature of democracy since the 6th century BCE, when democracy was introduced by the Athenian democracy. However, in Athenian democracy, voting was seen as the least democratic among methods used for selecting public officials, and was little used, because elections were believed to inherently favor the wealthy and well-known over average citizens. Viewed as more democratic were assemblies open to all citizens, and selection by lot, as well as rotation of office. Generally, the taking of votes was effected in the form of a poll. The practice of the Athenians, which is shown by inscriptions to have been widely followed in the other states of Greece, was to hold a show of hands, except on questions affecting the status of individuals: these latter, which included all lawsuits and proposals of ostracism, in which voters chose the citizen they most wanted to exile for ten years, were determined by secret ballot (one of the earliest recorded elections in Athens was a plurality vote that it was undesirable to win, namely an ostracism vote). At Rome the method which prevailed up to the 2nd century BCE was that of division. But the system became subject to intimidation and corruption. Hence a series of laws enacted between 139 and 107 BCE prescribed the use of the ballot, a slip of wood coated with wax, for all business done in the assemblies of the people. For the purpose of carrying resolutions a simple majority of votes was deemed sufficient. As a general rule equal value was made to attach to each vote; but in the popular assemblies at Rome a system of voting by groups was in force until the middle of the 3rd century BCE by which the richer classes secured a decisive preponderance. Most elections in the early history of democracy were held using plurality voting or some variant, but as an exception, the state of Venice in the 13th century adopted approval voting to elect their Great Council. The Venetians' method for electing the Doge was a particularly convoluted process, consisting of five rounds of drawing lots (sortition) and five rounds of approval voting. By drawing lots, a body of 30 electors was chosen, which was further reduced to nine electors by drawing lots again. An electoral college of nine members elected 40 people by approval voting; those 40 were reduced to form a second electoral college of 12 members by drawing lots again. The second electoral college elected 25 people by approval voting, which were reduced to form a third electoral college of nine members by drawing lots. The third electoral college elected 45 people, which were reduced to form a fourth electoral college of 11 by drawing lots. They in turn elected a final electoral body of 41 members, who ultimately elected the Doge. Despite its complexity, the method had certain desirable properties such as being hard to game and ensuring that the winner reflected the opinions of both majority and minority factions. This process, with slight modifications, was central to the politics of the Republic of Venice throughout its remarkable lifespan of over 500 years, from 1268 to 1797. Development of new systems Jean-Charles de Borda proposed the Borda count in 1770 as a method for electing members to the French Academy of Sciences. His method was opposed by the Marquis de Condorcet, who proposed instead the method of pairwise comparison that he had devised. Implementations of this method are known as Condorcet methods. He also wrote about the Condorcet paradox, which he called the intransitivity of majority preferences. However, recent research has shown that the philosopher Ramon Llull devised both the Borda count and a pairwise method that satisfied the Condorcet criterion in the 13th century. The manuscripts in which he described these methods had been lost to history until they were rediscovered in 2001. Later in the 18th century, apportionment methods came to prominence due to the United States Constitution, which mandated that seats in the United States House of Representatives had to be allocated among the states proportionally to their population, but did not specify how to do so. A variety of methods were proposed by statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Daniel Webster. Some of the apportionment methods devised in the United States were in a sense rediscovered in Europe in the 19th century, as seat allocation methods for the newly proposed method of party-list proportional representation. The result is that many apportionment methods have two names; Jefferson's method is equivalent to the D'Hondt method, as is Webster's method to the Sainte-Laguë method, while Hamilton's method is identical to the Hare largest remainder method. The single transferable vote (STV) method was devised by Carl Andræ in Denmark in 1855 and in the United Kingdom by Thomas Hare in 1857. STV elections were first held in Denmark in 1856, and in Tasmania in 1896 after its use was promoted by Andrew Inglis Clark. Over the course of the 20th century, STV was subsequently adopted by Ireland and Malta for their national elections, in Australia for their Senate elections, as well as by many municipal elections around the world. Party-list proportional representation began to be used to elect European legislatures in the early 20th century, with Belgium the first to implement it for its 1900 general elections. Since then, proportional and semi-proportional methods have come to be used in almost all democratic countries, with most exceptions being former British and French colonies. Single-winner innovations Perhaps influenced by the rapid development of multiple-winner electoral systems, theorists began to publish new findings about single-winner methods in the late 19th century. This began around 1870, when William Robert Ware proposed applying STV to single-winner elections, yielding instant-runoff voting (IRV). Soon, mathematicians began to revisit Condorcet's ideas and invent new methods for Condorcet completion; Edward J. Nanson combined the newly described instant runoff voting with the Borda count to yield a new Condorcet method called Nanson's method. Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, proposed the straightforward Condorcet method known as Dodgson's method. He also proposed a proportional representation system based on multi-member districts, quotas as minimum requirements to take seats, and votes transferable by candidates through proxy voting. Ranked voting electoral systems eventually gathered enough support to be adopted for use in government elections. In Australia, IRV was first adopted in 1893 and STV in 1896 (Tasmania). IRV continues to be used along with STV today. In the United States, during the early 20th-century progressive era some municipalities began to use supplementary voting and Bucklin voting. However, a series of court decisions ruled Bucklin to be unconstitutional, while supplementary voting was soon repealed in every city that had implemented it. The use of game theory to analyze electoral systems led to discoveries about the effects of certain methods. Earlier developments such as Arrow's impossibility theorem had already shown the issues with ranked voting systems. Research led Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn to formally define and promote the use of approval voting in 1977. Political scientists of the 20th century published many studies on the effects that the electoral systems have on voters' choices and political parties, and on political stability. A few scholars also studied which effects caused a nation to switch to a particular electoral system. Recent electoral reform efforts in the Anglosphere The study of electoral systems influenced a new push for electoral reform beginning around the 1990s, when proposals were made to replace plurality voting in governmental elections with other methods. New Zealand adopted mixed-member proportional representation for the 1996 general elections, having been approved in a 1993 referendum. After plurality voting was a factor in the contested results of the 2000 presidential elections in the United States, various municipalities in the United States have begun to adopt instant-runoff voting. In 2020 a referendum adopting approval voting in St. Louis passed with 70% support. In Canada, three separate referenda on the single transferable vote have failed (in 2005, 2009, and 2018). The 2020 Massachusetts Question 2, which attempted to expand instant-runoff voting into Massachusetts, was defeated by a 10-point margin. In the United Kingdom, a 2011 referendum on IRV saw the proposal rejected by a two-to-one margin. Repeals and backlash Some cities which adopted instant-runoff voting have subsequently returned to first-past-the-post. Studies have found voter satisfaction with IRV tends to fall dramatically the first time a race produces a result different from first-past-the-post. The United Kingdom used instant-runoff voting for most local elections up until 2022, before returning to first-past-the-post over concerns regarding the system's complexity. Ranked-choice voting has been implemented in two states and banned in 10 others (in addition to other states with constitutional prohibitions on the rule).A ballot initiative that would prohibit both approval voting and ranked-choice has been placed on the Missouri ballot. Comparison of electoral systems Electoral systems can be compared by different means: Define criteria mathematically, such that any electoral system either passes or fails. This gives perfectly objective results, but their practical relevance is still arguable. Define ideal criteria and use simulated elections to see how often or how close various methods fail to meet the selected criteria. This gives results which are practically relevant, but the method of generating the sample of simulated elections can still be arguably biased. Consider criteria that can be more easily measured using real-world elections, such as the Gallagher index, political fragmentation, voter turnout, wasted votes, political apathy, complexity of vote counting, and barriers to entry for new political movements and evaluate each method based on how they perform in real-world elections or evaluate the performance of countries with these electoral systems. Gibbard's theorem, built upon the earlier Arrow's theorem and the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem, to prove that for any single-winner deterministic voting methods, at least one of the following three properties must hold: The process is dictatorial, i.e. there is a single voter whose vote chooses the outcome. The process limits the possible outcomes to two options only. The process is not straightforward; the optimal ballot for a voter "requires strategic voting", i.e. it depends on their beliefs about other voters' ballots. According to a 2006 survey of electoral system experts, their preferred electoral systems were in order of preference: Mixed member proportional Single transferable vote Open list proportional Alternative vote Closed list proportional Single member plurality Runoffs Mixed member majoritarian Single non-transferable vote Systems by elected body See also Comparison of electoral systems Election Electronic voting List of electoral systems by country Matrix vote Spoiler effect Psephology Notes References External links ACE Electoral Knowledge Network The International IDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design IDEA

Framing (social sciences)

In the social sciences, framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality. Framing can manifest in thought or interpersonal communication. Frames in thought consist of the mental representations, interpretations, and simplifications of reality. Frames in communication consist of the communication of frames between different actors. Framing is a key component of sociology, the study of social interaction among humans. Framing is an integral part of conveying and processing data daily. Successful framing techniques can be used to reduce the ambiguity of intangible topics by contextualizing the information in such a way that recipients can connect to what they already know. In social theory, framing is a schema of interpretation, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes, that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In other words, people build a series of mental "filters" through biological and cultural influences. They then use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their creation of a frame. Framing involves social construction of a social phenomenon – by mass media sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other actors and organizations. Participation in a language community necessarily influences an individual's perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases. Politically, the language communities of advertising, religion, and mass media are highly contested, whereas framing in less-sharply defended language communities might evolve imperceptibly and organically over cultural time frames, with fewer overt modes of disputation. One can view framing in communication as positive or negative – depending on the audience and what kind of information is being presented. The framing may be in the form of equivalence frames, where two or more logically equivalent alternatives are portrayed in different ways (see framing effect) or emphasis frames, which simplify reality by focusing on a subset of relevant aspects of a situation or issue. In the case of "equivalence frames", the information being presented is based on the same facts, but the "frame" in which it is presented changes, thus creating a reference-dependent perception. The effects of framing can be seen in journalism: the frame surrounding the issue can change the reader's perception without having to alter the actual facts as the same information is used as a base. This is done through the media's choice of certain words and images to cover a story (e.g. using the word fetus vs. the word baby). In the context of politics or mass-media communication, a frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others. For political purposes, framing often presents facts in such a way that implicates a problem that requires a solution. Members of political parties attempt to frame issues in a way that makes a solution favoring their own political leaning appear as the most appropriate course of action for the situation at hand. Examples When we want to explain an event, our understanding is often based on our interpretation (frame). If someone rapidly closes and opens an eye, we react differently based on if we interpret this as a "physical frame" (they blinked) or a "social frame" (they winked). The blink may be due to a speck of dust (resulting in an involuntary and not particularly meaningful reaction). The wink may imply a voluntary and meaningful action (to convey humor to an accomplice, for example). Observers will read events seen as purely physical or within a frame of "nature" differently from those seen as occurring with social frames. But we do not look at an event and then "apply" a frame to it. Rather, individuals constantly project into the world around them the interpretive frames that allow them to make sense of it; we only shift frames (or realize that we have habitually applied a frame) when incongruity calls for a frame-shift. In other words, we only become aware of the frames that we always already use when something forces us to replace one frame with another. Though some consider framing to be synonymous with agenda setting, other scholars state that there is a distinction. According to an article written by Donald H. Weaver, framing selects certain aspects of an issue and makes them more prominent in order to elicit certain interpretations and evaluations of the issue, whereas agenda setting introduces the issue topic to increase its salience and accessibility. Effect in communication research In communication, framing defines how news media coverage shapes mass opinion. Richard E. Vatz's discourse on the creation of rhetorical meaning relates directly to framing, although he references it little. To be specific, framing effects refer to behavioral or attitudinal strategies and/or outcomes that are due to how a given piece of information is being framed in public discourse. Today, many volumes of the major communication journals contain papers on media frames and framing effects. Approaches used in such papers can be broadly classified into two groups: studies of framing as the dependent variable and studies of framing as the independent variable. The former usually deals with frame building (i.e. how frames create societal discourse about an issue and how different frames are adopted by journalists) and latter concerns frame setting (i.e. how media framing influences an audience). Frame building Frame-building research has typically recognized at least three main sets of influences that may impact the way journalists frame a certain issue: Systemic (e.g., characteristics of the media or political system in the specific setting of study). Organizational (e.g., features of the media organization such as political orientation, professional routines, relationships with government and elites, etc.). Temporal-contextual (e.g., time elapsed after the triggering event). Erving Goffman emphasized the role of cultural context as a shaper of frames when he posited that the meaning of a frame has implicit cultural roots. This context dependency of media frames has been described as 'cultural resonance' or 'narrative fidelity'. As an example, most people might not notice the frame in stories about the separation of church and state, because the media generally does not frame their stories from a religious point of view. Frame building is a process that influences the creation or changes of frames applied by journalists. The term frame building, borrowed from agenda-setting research, seems to capture these processes best. Frame setting When people are exposed to a novel news frame, they will accept the constructs made applicable to an issue, but they are significantly more likely to do so when they have existing mindset for those settings. This is called the applicability effect. That is, when new frames invite people to apply their existing schema to an issue, the implication of that application depends, in part, on what is in that schema. Therefore, generally, the more the audiences know about issues, the more effective are frames. For example, the more an audience knows about the deceitful practices of the tobacco industry, the more effective is the frame of the tobacco industry, rather than individuals who smoke, being responsible for the health impacts of smoking. There are a number of levels and types of framing effects that have been examined. For example, scholars have focused on attitudinal and behavioral changes, the degrees of perceived importance of the issue, voting decisions, and opinion formations. Others are interested in psychological processes other than applicability. For instance, Iyengar suggested that news about social problems can influence attributions of causal and treatment responsibility, an effect observed in both cognitive responses and evaluations of political leaders, or other scholars looked at the framing effects on receivers' evaluative processing style and the complexity of audience members' thoughts about issues. Frame setting studies also address how frames can affect how someone thinks about an issue (cognitive) or feels about an issue (affective). In mass communication research News media frame all news items by emphasizing specific values, facts, and other considerations, and endowing them with greater apparent applicability for making related judgments. News media promotes particular definitions, interpretations, evaluations and recommendations. Foundations in communication research Anthropologist Gregory Bateson first defined the concept of framing as "a spatial and temporal bounding of a set of interactive messages" (A Theory of Play and Fantasy, 1954, reproduced in his 1972 book Steps to an Ecology of Mind). Sociological roots of media framing research Media framing research has both sociological and psychological roots. Sociological framing focuses on "the words, images, phrases, and presentation styles" that communicators use when relaying information to recipients. Research on frames in sociologically driven media research generally examines the influence of "social norms and values, organizational pressures and constraints, pressures of interest groups, journalistic routines, and ideological or political orientations of journalists" on the existence of frames in media content. Todd Gitlin, in his analysis of how the news media trivialized the student New Left movement during the 1960s, was among the first to examine media frames from a sociological perspective. Frames, Gitlin wrote, are "persistent patterns of cognition, interpretations, and presentation, of selection [and] emphasis ... [that are] largely unspoken and unacknowledged ... [and] organize the world for both journalists [and] for those of us who read their reports". Psychological roots of media framing research Research on frames in psychologically driven media research generally examines the effects of media frames on those who receive them. For example, Iyengar explored the impact of episodic and thematic news frames on viewers' attributions of responsibility for political issues including crime, terrorism, poverty, unemployment, and racial inequality. According to Iyengar, an episodic news frame "takes the form of a case study or event-oriented report and depicts public issues in terms of concrete instances", in other words focusing on specific place in a specific time Thematic news frame "places public issues in some more general abstract context ... directed at general outcomes or conditions", for example exploring commonality that happens in several place and time. Iyengar found that the majority of television news coverage of poverty, for example, was episodic. In fact, in a content analysis of six years of television news, Iyengar found that the typical news viewer would have been twice as likely to encounter episodic rather than thematic television news about poverty. Further, experimental results indicate participants who watched episodic news coverage of poverty were more than twice as likely as those who watched thematic news coverage of poverty to attribute responsibility of poverty to the poor themselves rather than society. Given the predominance of episodic framing of poverty, Iyengar argues that television news shifts responsibility of poverty from government and society to the poor themselves. For example, the news media could use the "laziness and dysfunction" frame, which insinuates the poor would rather stay at home than go to work. After examining content analysis and experimental data on poverty and other political issues, Iyengar concludes that episodic news frames divert citizens' attributions of political responsibility away from society and political elites, making them less likely to support government efforts to address those issue and obscuring the connections between those issues and their elected officials' actions or lack thereof. Visual framing Visual framing refers to the process of using images to portray certain parts of reality. Visuals can be used to manifest meaning alongside textual framing. Text and visuals function best simultaneously. Advancement in print and screen-based technologies has resulted in merging of the two modes in information dissemination. Since each mode has its limitations, they are best used together and are interlinked in forming meaning. Images are more preferable than text since they are less intrusive than words and require less cognitive load. From a psychological perspective, images activate nerve cells in the eyes in order to send information to the brain. Images can also generate a stronger emotional appeal and have high attraction value. Within the framing context, images can obscure issues and facts in effort to frame information. Visuals consist of rhetorical tools such as metaphors, depiction and symbols to portray the context of an event or scene graphically in an attempt to help us better understand the world around us. Images can have a one-to-one correspondence between what is captured on camera and its representation in the real world. Along with increasing understanding, visuals can also elevate retention rates, making information easier to remember and recall. Due to the comparable nature of images, grammar rules do not apply. According to researchers, framing is reflected within a four-tiered model, which identifies and analyzes visual frames as follows: visuals as denotative systems, visuals as stylistic-semiotic systems, visuals as connotative systems and visuals as ideological representations. Researchers caution against relying only on images to understand information. Since they hold more power than text and are more relatable to reality, we may overlook potential manipulations and staging and mistake this as evidence. Images can be representative of ideologies by ascertaining underlying principles that constitute our basic attributes by combining symbols and stylistic features of an image into a process of coherent interpretation. One study indicates visual framing is prominent in news coverage, especially in relation to politics. Emotionally charged images are seen as a prominent tool for framing political messages. Visual framing can be effective by putting emphasis on a specific aspect of an issue, a tactic commonly used in portrayal of war and conflict news known as empathy framing. Visual framing that has emotional appeal can be considered more salient. This type of framing can be applied to other contexts, including athletics in relation to athletic disability. Visual framing in this context can reinterpret the perspective on athletic and physical incompetence, a formerly established media stereotype. Clarifying and distinguishing a "fractured paradigm" Perhaps because of their use across the social sciences, frames have been defined and used in many disparate ways. Entman called framing "a scattered conceptualization" and "a fractured paradigm" that "is often defined casually, with much left to an assumed tacit understanding of the reader". In an effort to provide more conceptual clarity, Entman suggested that frames "select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described". Entman's conceptualization of framing, which suggests frames work by elevating particular pieces of information in salience, is in line with much early research on the psychological underpinnings of framing effects (see also Iyengar, who argues that accessibility is the primary psychological explanation for the existence of framing effects). Wyer and Srull explain the construct of accessibility thus: People store related pieces of information in "referent bins" in their long-term memory. People organize "referent bins" such that more frequently and recently used pieces of information are stored at the top of the bins and are therefore more accessible. Because people tend to retrieve only a small portion of information from long-term memory when making judgments, they tend to retrieve the most accessible pieces of information to use for making those judgments. The argument supporting accessibility as the psychological process underlying framing can therefore be summarized thus: Because people rely heavily on news media for public affairs information, the most accessible information about public affairs often comes from the public affairs news they consume. This argument has also been cited as support in the debate over whether framing should be subsumed by agenda-setting theory as part of the second level of agenda setting. McCombs and other agenda-setting scholars generally agree that framing should be incorporated, along with priming, under the umbrella of agenda setting as a complex model of media effects that links media production, content, and audience effects. Indeed, McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar, and Rey justified their attempt to combine framing and agenda-setting research on the assumption of parsimony. Scheufele, however, argues that, unlike agenda setting and priming, framing does not rely primarily on accessibility, making it inappropriate to combine framing with agenda setting and priming for the sake of parsimony. Empirical evidence seems to vindicate Scheufele's claim. For example, Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley empirically demonstrated that applicability, rather than their salience, is key. Measuring accessibility in terms of response latency of respondent answers, where more accessible information results in faster response times, Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley demonstrated that accessibility accounted for only a minor proportion of the variance in framing effects while applicability accounted for the major proportion of variance. Therefore, according to Nelson and colleagues, "frames influence opinions by stressing specific values, facts, and other considerations, endowing them with greater apparent relevance to the issue than they might appear to have under an alternative frame." In other words, while early research suggested that by highlighting particular aspects of issues, frames make certain considerations more accessible and therefore more likely to be used in the judgment process, more recent research suggests that frames work by making particular considerations more applicable and therefore more relevant to the judgment process. Equivalency versus emphasis: two types of frames in media research Chong and Druckman suggest framing research has mainly focused on two types of frames: equivalency and emphasis frames. Equivalency frames offer "different, but logically equivalent phrases", which cause individuals to alter their preferences. Equivalency frames are often worded in terms of "gains" versus "losses". For example, Kahneman and Tversky asked participants to choose between two "gain-framed" policy responses to a hypothetical disease outbreak expected to kill 600 people. Response A would save 200 people while Response B had a one-third probability of saving everyone, but a two-thirds probability of saving no one. Participants overwhelmingly chose Response A, which they perceived as the less risky option. Kahneman and Tversky asked other participants to choose between two equivalent "loss-framed" policy responses to the same disease outbreak. In this condition, Response A would kill 400 people while Response B had a one-third probability of killing no one but a two-thirds probability of killing everyone. Although these options are mathematically identical to those given in the "gain-framed" condition, participants overwhelmingly chose Response B, the risky option. Kahneman and Tversky, then, demonstrated that when phrased in terms of potential gains, people tend to choose what they perceive as the less risky option (i.e., the sure gain). Conversely, when faced with a potential loss, people tend to choose the riskier option. Unlike equivalency frames, emphasis frames offer "qualitatively different yet potentially relevant considerations" which individuals use to make judgments. Emphasis framing is distinct from agenda-setting. Emphasis framing represents the changes in the structure of communication to evoke a particular cognitive schema. Agenda setting relies upon the frequency or prominence of a message's issues to tell people what to think about. Emphasis framing refers to the influence of the structure of the message and agenda setting refers to the influence of the prominence of the content. For example, Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley exposed participants to a news story that presented the Ku Klux Klan's plan to hold a rally. Participants in one condition read a news story that framed the issue in terms of public safety concerns while participants in the other condition read a news story that framed the issue in terms of free speech considerations. Participants exposed to the public safety condition considered public safety applicable for deciding whether the Klan should be allowed to hold a rally and, as expected, expressed lower tolerance of the Klan's right to hold a rally. Participants exposed to the free speech condition considered free speech applicable for deciding whether the Klan should be allowed to hold a rally and, as expected, expressed greater tolerance of the Klan's right to hold a rally. In finance Preference reversals and other associated phenomena are of wider relevance within behavioural economics, as they contradict the predictions of rational choice, the basis of traditional economics. Framing biases affecting investing, lending, borrowing decisions make one of the themes of behavioral finance. In psychology and economics Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman have shown that framing can affect the outcome of choice problems (i.e. the choices one makes), so much so that some of the classic axioms of rational choice are not true. This led to the development of prospect theory. The context or framing of problems adopted by decision-makers results in part from extrinsic manipulation of the decision-options offered, as well as from forces intrinsic to decision-makers, e.g., their norms, habits, and unique temperament. Experimental demonstration Tversky and Kahneman (1981) demonstrated systematic when the same problem is presented in different ways, for example in the Asian disease problem. Participants were asked to "imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows." The first group of participants was presented with a choice between programs: In a group of 600 people, Program A: "200 people will be saved" Program B: "there is a 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and a 2/3 probability that no people will be saved" 72 percent of participants preferred program A (the remainder, 28%, opting for program B). The second group of participants was presented with the choice between the following: In a group of 600 people, Program C: "400 people will die" Program D: "there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die" In this decision frame, 78% preferred program D, with the remaining 22% opting for program C. Programs A and C are identical, as are programs B and D. The change in the decision frame between the two groups of participants produced a preference reversal: when the programs were presented in terms of lives saved, the participants preferred the secure program, A (= C). When the programs were presented in terms of expected deaths, participants chose the gamble D (= B). Absolute and relative influences Framing effects arise because one can often frame a decision using multiple scenarios, in which one may express benefits either as a relative risk reduction (RRR), or as absolute risk reduction (ARR). Extrinsic control over the cognitive distinctions (between risk tolerance and reward anticipation) adopted by decision makers can occur through altering the presentation of relative risks and absolute benefits. People generally prefer the absolute certainty inherent in a positive framing-effect, which offers an assurance of gains. When decision-options appear framed as a likely gain, risk-averse choices predominate. A shift toward risk-seeking behavior occurs when a decision-maker frames decisions in negative terms, or adopts a negative framing effect. In medical decision making, framing bias is best avoided by using absolute measures of efficacy. Frame-manipulation research Researchers have found that framing decision-problems in a positive light generally results in less-risky choices; with negative framing of problems, riskier choices tend to result. In a study by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, 57% of the subjects chose a medication when presented with benefits in relative terms, whereas only 14.7% chose a medication whose benefit appeared in absolute terms. Further questioning of the patients suggested that, because the subjects ignored the underlying risk of disease, they perceived benefits as greater when expressed in relative terms. Theoretical models Researchers have proposed various models explaining the framing effect: cognitive theories, such as the fuzzy-trace theory, attempt to explain the framing-effect by determining the amount of cognitive processing effort devoted to determining the value of potential gains and losses. prospect theory explains the framing-effect in functional terms, determined by preferences for differing perceived values, based on the assumption that people give a greater weighting to losses than to equivalent gains. motivational theories explain the framing-effect in terms of hedonic forces affecting individuals, such as fears and wishes—based on the notion that negative emotions evoked by potential losses usually out-weigh the emotions evoked by hypothetical gains. cognitive cost-benefit trade-off theory defines choice as a compromise between desires, either as a preference for a correct decision or a preference for minimized cognitive effort. This model, which dovetails elements of cognitive and motivational theories, postulates that calculating the value of a sure gain takes much less cognitive effort than that required to select a risky gain. Neuroimaging Cognitive neuroscientists have linked the framing effect to neural activity in the amygdala, and have identified another brain-region, the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC), that appears to moderate the role of emotion on decisions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor brain-activity during a financial decision-making task, they observed greater activity in the OMPFC of those research subjects less susceptible to the framing effect. In sociology Framing theory and frame analysis provide a broad theoretical approach that analysts have used in communication studies, news (Johnson-Cartee, 1995), politics, and social movements (among other applications). According to Bert Klandermans, the "social construction of collective action frames" involves "public discourse, that is, the interface of media discourse and interpersonal interaction; persuasive communication during mobilization campaigns by movement organizations, their opponents and countermovement organizations; and consciousness raising during episodes of collective action". History Word-selection has been a component of rhetoric. Most commentators attribute the concept of framing to the work of Erving Goffman on frame analysis and point to his 1974 book, Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Goffman used the idea of frames to label "schemata of interpretation" that allow individuals or groups "to locate, perceive, identify, and label" events and occurrences, thus rendering meaning, organizing experiences, and guiding actions. Goffman's framing concept evolved out of his 1959 work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, a commentary on the management of impressions. These works arguably depend on Kenneth Boulding's concept of image. Social movements Sociologists have utilized framing to explain the process of social movements. Movements act as carriers of beliefs and ideologies (compare memes). In addition, they operate as part of the process of constructing meaning for participants and opposers (Snow & Benford, 1988). Sociologists deem the mobilization of mass-movements "successful" when the frames projected align with the frames of participants to produce resonance between the two parties. Researchers of framing speak of this process as frame re-alignment. Frame alignment Snow and Benford (1988) regard frame-alignment as an important element in social mobilization or movement. They argue that when individual frames become linked in congruency and complementariness, "frame alignment" occurs, producing "frame resonance", a catalyst in the process of a groresearup making the transition from one frame to another (although not all framing efforts prove successful). The conditions that affect or constrain framing efforts include the following: "The robustness, completeness, and thoroughness of the framing effort". Snow and Benford (1988) identify three core framing-tasks, and state that the degree to which framers attend to these tasks will determine participant mobilization. They characterize the three tasks as the following: diagnostic framing for the identification of a problem and assignment of blame prognostic framing to suggest solutions, strategies, and tactics to a problem motivational framing that serves as a call to arms or rationale for action The relationship between the proposed frame and the larger belief-system; centrality: the frame cannot be of low hierarchical significance and salience within the larger belief system. Its range and interrelatedness, if the framer links the frame to only one core belief or value that, in itself, has a limited range within the larger belief system, the frame has a high degree of being discounted. Relevance of the frame to the realities of the participants; a frame must seem relevant to participants and must also inform them. Empirical credibility or testability can constrain relevancy: it relates to participant experience, and has narrative fidelity, meaning that it fits in with existing cultural myths and narrations. Cycles of protest (Tarrow 1983a; 1983b); the point at which the frame emerges on the timeline of the current era and existing preoccupations with social change. Previous frames may affect efforts to impose a new frame. Snow and Benford (1988) propose that once someone has constructed proper frames as described above, large-scale changes in society such as those necessary for social movement can be achieved through frame-alignment. Types Frame-alignment comes in four forms: frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension and frame transformation. Frame bridging involves the "linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 467). It involves the linkage of a movement to "unmobilized [sic] sentiment pools or public opinion preference clusters" (p. 467) of people who share similar views or grievances but who lack an organizational base. Frame amplification refers to "the clarification and invigoration of an interpretive frame that bears on a particular issue, problem, or set of events" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 469). This interpretive frame usually involves the invigorating of values or beliefs. Frame extensions represent a movement's effort to incorporate participants by extending the boundaries of the proposed frame to include or encompass the views, interests, or sentiments of targeted groups (Snow et al., 1986, p. 472). Frame transformation becomes necessary when the proposed frames "may not resonate with, and on occasion may even appear antithetical to, conventional lifestyles or rituals and extant interpretive frames" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 473). When this happens, the securing of participants and support requires new values, new meanings and understandings. Goffman (1974, pp. 43–44) calls this "keying", where "activities, events, and biographies that are already meaningful from the standpoint of some primary framework, in terms of another framework" (Snow et al., 1986, p. 474) such that they are seen differently. Two types of frame transformation exist: Domain-specific transformations, such as the attempt to alter the status of groups of people, and Global interpretive frame-transformation, where the scope of change seems quite radical—as in a change of world-views, total conversions of thought, or uprooting of everything familiar (for example: moving from communism to market capitalism, or vice versa; religious conversion, etc.). As rhetorical criticism Although the idea of language-framing had been explored earlier by Kenneth Burke (terministic screens), political communication researcher Jim A. Kuypers first published work advancing frame analysis (framing analysis) as a rhetorical perspective in 1997. His approach begins inductively by looking for themes that persist across time in a text (for Kuypers, primarily news narratives on an issue or event) and then determining how those themes are framed. Kuypers's work begins with the assumption that frames are powerful rhetorical entities that "induce us to filter our perceptions of the world in particular ways, essentially making some aspects of our multi-dimensional reality more noticeable than other aspects. They operate by making some information more salient than other information." In his 2009 essay "Framing Analysis" in Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action and his 2010 essay "Framing Analysis as a Rhetorical Process", Kuypers offers a detailed conception for doing framing analysis from a rhetorical perspective. According to Kuypers, "Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner. Frames operate in four key ways: they define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies. Frames are often found within a narrative account of an issue or event, and are generally the central organizing idea." Kuypers's work is based on the premise that framing is a rhetorical process and as such it is best examined from a rhetorical point of view. Curing the problem is not rhetorical and best left to the observer. In environmental discourse History of climate activism Climate activism is constantly shaped and reshaped by dialogue at the local, national, and international level pertaining to climate change as well as by evolving societal norms and values. Beginning with the 19th century transcendental movement in which Henry David Thoreau penned his novel On Walden Pond detailing his experiences with the natural environment and augmented by the work of other transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, climate activism has taken many forms. John Muir, also from the late 19th century, advocated for the preservation of Earth for its own sake, establishing the Sierra Club. Aldo Leopold's 1949 collection of essays, A Sand County Almanac, established a "land ethic" and has set the stage for modern environmental ethics, calling for conservation and preservation of nature and wilderness. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, revealed the environmental and human health harms of pesticides and successfully advocated for the cessation of DDT usage. The concept of global climate change and subsequently the activism space pertaining to the climate took off in the 1970s. The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970. The decades following witnessed the establishment of Greenpeace, Earth First!, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Landmark climate documents in the last 30 years include the Rio Declaration, Kyoto Protocol, Paris Climate Agreement, Global Youth Climate Action Declaration, among others. Most recently, the Peoples Climate March and Global Climate Strike have evolved into events attended by millions of activists and citizens around the world annually. Climate activism has been reinvigorated by an insurgence of young people on the frontlines of dialogue and advocacy. Greta Thunberg, a young Swedish woman, founded the initiative Fridays for Future which now has active chapters in scores of countries around the world. Other active youth-led climate groups include Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, SustainUS, the Global Youth Climate Action Declaration (GYCAD), ZeroHour, among others working at both the transnational and local levels. Individual motivation and acceptance Individual motivation to address climate change is the bedrock on which collective action is built. Decision-making processes are informed by a myriad of factors including values, beliefs, and normative behaviors. In the United States, individuals have been most effectively motivated to support climate change policies when a public health frame has been employed. This frame reduces the sense of ambiguity and dissociation often elicited by talk of melting ice sheets and carbon emissions by placing climate issues in a local context for the individual, whether in their country, state, or city. Climate change, as an issue that has yet to be established as a normative belief, is often subject to dissent in the face of activism and advocacy. Activists engaging in interpersonal, grassroots advocacy in order to elicit more pro-environmental conduct within their social groups, even those engaged in polite confrontation, are subject to negative reactions and social consequences in the face of opposition. Moreover, climate change has the capacity to be defined as a moral issue due to anthropogenic effects on the planet and on other human life, however there are psychological barriers to the acceptance of climate change and subsequent motivation to act in response to the need for intervention. An article in the journal Nature Climate Change by Ezra Markowitz and Azim Shariff emphasizes six psychological challenges, listed below, posed by climate change to the human moral judgement system: Abstractness and cognitive complexity: the abstract nature of climate change makes it non-intuitive and cognitively effortful to grasp The blamelessness of unintentional action: The human moral judgement system is finely tuned to react to intentional transgressions Guilty bias: Anthropogenic climate change provokes self-defensive biases Uncertainty breeds wishful thinking: The lack of definitive prognoses results in unreasonable optimism Moral tribalism: The politicization of climate change fosters ideological polarization Long time horizons and faraway places: Out-group victims fall by the wayside Dire messaging Climate activism manifests itself through a range of expressions. One aspect of climate change framing that is commonly observed is the frame of dire messaging that has been criticized as alarmist and pessimistic, resulting in a dismissal of evidence-based messages. The just-world theory supports the notion that some individuals must rely on their presupposition of a just-world in order to substantiate beliefs. "Research on just-world theory has demonstrated that when individuals' need to believe in a just world is threatened, they commonly employ defensive responses, such as dismissal or rationalization of the information that threatened their just-world beliefs". In the case of climate change, the notion of dire messaging is critical to understanding what motivates activism. For example, having a fear of climate change "attributed to the self's incapacity to prevent it may result in withdrawal, while considering someone else responsible may result in anger". In a 2017 study, it was found that activist interviewees from the Global North embrace fear as a motivation, but "emphasize hope, reject guilt, and treat anger with caution". Interviewees from the Global South indicated that they are "instead more acutely frightened, less hopeful, and more angered, ascribing guilt – responsibility – to northern countries. These differences may indicate a relatively depoliticized activist approach to climate change in the north, as opposed to a more politicized approach in the south." Another 2017 study shows that fear motivates action through raising awareness of the threat of climate catastrophe. Fear's paralyzing potential is mediated by hope: Hope propels action, while collective action generates hope while also managing fear. The danger-alerting capacity of fear is embraced "internally", but is rejected as an effective emotion in motivating people to mobilize. Research has shown that dire messaging reduces the efficacy of advocacy initiatives through demotivation of individuals, lower levels of concern, and decreased engagement. Positive framing Research contends that prognostic framing—which offers tangible solutions, strategies, targets, and tactics—coupled with motivational framing is most efficacious in moving people to act. Especially as it relates to climate change, the power of positive psychology is made evident when applied by activists and others generating interventions. The four main tenets of motivation as elucidated by Positive Psychology are agency, compassion, resilience, and purpose. When applied to climate action, the 4th edition textbook Psychology for Sustainability, further expands upon these tenets as they relate to sustainability and as catalysts of action: Agency: Choosing, planning, and executing situation-relevant behavior Compassion: Noticing, feeling, and responding to others' suffering arising from a sense of connectedness Purpose: Striving toward meaningful activity Resilience: Recovering from, coping with, or developing new strategies for resisting adversity Hope augments a sense of purpose and agency, while enhancing resilience. For climate activists, it is infeasible to decouple hope from fear. However, when deconstructing the hope that others will take necessary actions, hope is generated through faith in one's own capacity, indicating that "trust in 'one's own' collective action seems to be the essence of the hope that activists talk about". Additionally, creating a link between climate action and positive emotions such as gratitude and pride, improvements in subjective well-being, and potential for impact permits individuals to perceive their own actions to better the climate as a sustainable, rewarding manner rather than as demotivating. Another approach that has proven to be efficacious is the projection of a future utopian society in which all pressing issues have been resolved, offering creative narratives that walk individuals from current problems to future solutions and allow them to choose to serve as a bridge between the two. This intergenerational, positive approach generates a sense of excitement about climate action in individuals and offers creative solutions that they may choose to take part in. For example, a public service announcement pertaining to climate change could be framed as follows: Political ideology Political communication scholars adopted framing tactics since political rhetoric was around. Advances in technology have shifted the communication channels they were delivered on. From oral communication, written material, radio, television, and most recently, social media have played a prominent role in how politics is framed. Social media, in particular, allows politicians to communicate their ideologies with concise and precise messaging. Using emotional triggering words, focusing on eliciting fear or anger, to change the way the public feels about a policy is facilitated by the short attention span created by social media.  In recent decades, climate change has become deeply politicized and often, initiatives to address or conceptualize climate change are palatable to one contingency, while deeply contentious to the other. Thus, it is important to frame climate activism in a way that is tangible for the audience, finding means of communicating while minimizing provocation. In the context of the United States, left-leaning "liberals" share the core values of care, openness, egalitarianism, collective good, possess a tolerance for uncertainty or ambiguity, and an acceptance of change; while right-leaning "conservatives" share the core values of security, purity, stability, tradition, social hierarchy, order, and individualism. Research finds that framing environmental protection as consistent with the more values of "purity" and sanctity can increase conservatives support for environmental protection. A study examining various predictors of public approval for renewable energy usage in the Western United States used seven varying frames in order to assess the efficacy of framing renewable energy. Neoliberal frameworks that are often echoed by conservatives, such as support for the free market economy, are posited against climate action interventions that inherently place constraints on the free economy through support for renewable energy through subsidies or through additional tax on nonrenewable sources of energy. Thus, when climate activists are in conversation with conservative-leaning individuals, it would be advantageous to focus on framing that does not provoke fear of constraint on the free market economy or that insinuates broad-sweeping lifestyle changes. Results of the same study support the notion that "non-climate-based frames for renewable energy are likely to garner broader public support" relative to political context and demonstrate the polarized response to climate-based framing, indicating a deep political polarization of climate change. The idea of political framing is derived from loss aversion. Politicians want to make their idea less of a risk to potential voters since "People pay more attention to losses than to gains, just as they tend to engage in particular behaviors in the face of losses. Specifically, people take risks when they believe it helps them avert a loss, but when they face a gain, they opt for risk-averse strategies that maintain status quo". They will communicate it in a way that can convince themselves that they are not losing by agreeing with their ideology. Political framing has also affected other policies besides climate change. Welfare, for example, has been subjected to political framing to shift public opinion on the implementation of the policy. The sheer flux of different frames is conducive to the change of public opinion throughout the years. It affects how people look at "deservedness" when it comes to welfare. One end can be seen as political credit, claiming where in-need citizens have a right to claim welfare as a necessity. It is framed as a duty from the government to citizens. In this frame, no one losses because government is doing its duty to maximize the quality of life for its entire society. The other side sees welfare retrenchment as necessary by using framing tactics to shift the blame and responsibility from the government to the citizens. The idea is to convince the public that welfare should be pushed back for their benefit. Contemporary rhetoric, championed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, has made the idea of "hard work" their frame to say welfare wouldn't be necessary if people "worked harder". With this contrasting frame, wealthier people are now losing because they are losing money in helping fund welfare benefits to those that "work less" than them. This different frame makes welfare seem like a zero-sum game. Gender norms The framing of climate change varies according to the intended audience and their perceived responses to various approaches to activism. In Sweden, research evaluating sustainability in the male-dominated transportation sector suggests that the norms provided by femininity are more likely to advance sustainability endeavors, while subsequently lowering the overall emissions of the sector. This is evident throughout the study, which goes on to indicate that the "mobility patterns, behavior, and attitudes of women suggest norms that are more conducive to decarbonized and more sustainable transport policies". This suggests that masculinity is often portrayed as the norm in many sectors and substantiates the link between women and a sustainability ethic that is critically missing from many male-dominated sectors and industries. Studies indicate that consumers who exhibit a predisposition to environmentally conscious, "green" behaviors are perceived across the gender spectrum as being more feminine, enforcing a "Green Feminine" stereotype. Climate activism is viewed as an effeminate act, undermining hallmarks of masculinity and underscoring the gender gap in a care-based concern for the climate. Additionally, as a result of theories pertaining to gender-identity maintenance, "men's environmental choices can be influenced by gender cues, results showed that following a gender-identity (vs. age) threat, men were less likely to choose green products". Attributes that are associated with femininity and substantiate the cognitive association between women and green behavior include empathy and the capacity for self-transcendence. In law Edward Zelinsky has shown that framing effects can explain some observed behaviors of legislators. In media In media, to frame is "to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communication context, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described". The role framing plays in the effects of media presentation has been widely discussed, with the central notion that associated perceptions of factual information can vary based upon the presentation of the information. Oftentimes journalists do not necessarily develop and use these frames consciously, but they are used as a way to organize ideas and suggest what is an issue in the media. News media examples In Bush's War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age, Jim A. Kuypers examined the differences in framing of the war on terror between the Bush administration and the U.S. mainstream news media between 2001 and 2005. Kuypers looked for common themes between presidential speeches and press reporting of those speeches, and then determined how the president and the press had framed those themes. By using a rhetorical version of framing analysis, Kuypers determined that the U.S. news media advanced frames counter to those used by the Bush administration: Table One: Comparison of President and News Media Themes and Frames 8 Weeks after 9/11 In 1991 Robert M. Entman published findings surrounding the differences in media coverage between Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and Iran Air Flight 655. After evaluating various levels of media coverage, based on both amount of airtime and pages devoted to similar events, Entman concluded that the frames the events were presented in by the media were drastically different: Differences in coverage amongst various media outlets: In 1988 Irwin Levin and Gary Gaeth did a study on the effects of framing attribute information on consumers before and after consuming a product (1988). In this study, they found that in a study on beef, people who ate beef labeled as 75% lean rated it more favorably than people whose beef was labelled 25% fat. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of loss vs. gain framing was studied in the use of messages communication COVID-19 risk to the public. Messages framed in terms of gain would say "Wear a mask, save lives". Messages framed in terms of loss would say "if you do not wear a mask, lives will be lost". Results of this studies showed there was no impact on (1) behavioral intentions to follow guidelines to prevent COVID-19 transmission, (2) attitudes to- ward COVID-19 prevention policies, (3) whether participants chose to seek more information about COVID-19, however there was increased self reported anxiety when messages from the media where framed in loss. In politics Linguist and rhetoric scholar George Lakoff argues that, in order to persuade a political audience of one side of an argument or another, the facts must be presented through a rhetorical frame. It is argued that, without the frame, the facts of an argument become lost on an audience, making the argument less effective. The rhetoric of politics uses framing to present the facts surrounding an issue in a way that creates the appearance of a problem at hand that requires a solution. Politicians using framing to make their own solution to an exigence appear to be the most appropriate compared to that of the opposition. Counter-arguments become less effective in persuading an audience once one side has framed an argument, because it is argued that the opposition then has the additional burden of arguing the frame of the issue in addition to the issue itself. Framing a political issue, a political party or a political opponent is a strategic goal in politics, particularly in the United States. Both the Democratic and Republican political parties compete to successfully harness its power of persuasion. According to The New York Times: Because framing can alter the public's perception, politicians disagree on how issues are framed. Hence, the way the issues are framed in the media reflects who is winning the battle. For instance, according to Robert Entman, professor of Communication at George Washington University, in the build-up to the Gulf War the conservatives were successful in making the debate whether to attack sooner or later, with no mention of the possibility of not attacking. One particular example of Lakoff's work that attained some degree of fame was his advice to rename trial lawyers (unpopular in the United States) as "public protection attorneys". Though Americans have not generally adopted this suggestion, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America did rename themselves the "American Association of Justice", in what the Chamber of Commerce called an effort to hide their identity. The New York Times depicted similar intensity among Republicans: From a political perspective, framing has widespread consequences. For example, the concept of framing links with that of agenda-setting: by consistently invoking a particular frame, the framing party may effectively control discussion and perception of the issue. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in Trust Us, We're Experts illustrate how public-relations (PR) firms often use language to help frame a given issue, structuring the questions that then subsequently emerge. For example, one firm advises clients to use "bridging language" that uses a strategy of answering questions with specific terms or ideas in order to shift the discourse from an uncomfortable topic to a more comfortable one. Practitioners of this strategy might attempt to draw attention away from one frame in order to focus on another. As Lakoff notes, "On the day that George W. Bush took office, the words "tax relief" started coming out of the White House." By refocusing the structure away from one frame ("tax burden" or "tax responsibilities"), individuals can set the agenda of the questions asked in the future. Cognitive linguists point to an example of framing in the phrase "tax relief". In this frame, use of the concept "relief" entails a concept of (without mentioning the benefits resulting from) taxes putting strain on the citizen: Alternative frames may emphasize the concept of taxes as a source of infrastructural support to businesses: Frames can limit debate by setting the vocabulary and metaphors through which participants can comprehend and discuss an issue. They form a part not just of political discourse, but of cognition. In addition to generating new frames, politically oriented framing research aims to increase public awareness of the connection between framing and reasoning. Examples The initial response of the Bush administration to the assault of September 11, 2001 was to frame the acts of terror as crime. This framing was replaced within hours by a war metaphor, yielding the "War on Terror". The difference between these two framings is in the implied response. Crime connotes bringing criminals to justice, putting them on trial and sentencing them, whereas as war implies enemy territory, military action and war powers for government. The term "escalation" to describe an increase in American troop-levels in Iraq in 2007 implied that the United States deliberately increased the scope of conflict in a provocative manner and possibly implies that U.S. strategy entails a long-term military presence in Iraq, whereas "surge" framing implies a powerful but brief, transitory increase in intensity. The "bad apple" frame, as in the proverb "one bad apple spoils the barrel". This frame implies that removing one underachieving or corrupt official from an institution will solve a given problem; an opposing frame presents the same problem as systematic or structural to the institution itself—a source of infectious and spreading rot. The "taxpayers money" frame, rather than public or government funds, which implies that individual taxpayers have a claim or right to set government policy based upon their payment of tax rather than their status as citizens or voters and that taxpayers have a right to control public funds that are the shared property of all citizens and also privileges individual self-interest above group interest. The "collective property" frame, which implies that property owned by individuals is really owned by a collective in which those individuals are members. This collective can be a territorial one, such as a nation, or an abstract one that does not map to a specific territory. Program-names that may describe only the intended effects of a program but may also imply their effectiveness. These include the following: "Foreign aid" (which implies that spending money will aid foreigners, rather than harm them) "Social security" (which implies that the program can be relied on to provide security for a society) "Stabilisation policy" (which implies that a policy will have a stabilizing effect). Based on opinion polling and focus groups, ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm, has advanced the position that global warming is an ineffective framing due to its identification as a leftist advocacy issue. The organization has suggested to government officials and environmental groups that alternate formulations of the issues would be more effective. In her 2009 book Frames of War, Judith Butler argues that the justification within liberal-democracies for war, and atrocities committed in the course of war, (referring specifically to the current war in Iraq and to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay) entails a framing of the (especially Muslim) 'other' as pre-modern/primitive and ultimately not human in the same way as citizens within the liberal order. Political leaders provide their personal photographers and videographers with access to private moments that are off-limits to journalists. The news media then faces an ethical dilemma of whether to republish freely available digital handouts that project the politician's desired frame but which might be newsworthy. Effectiveness According to Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, human beings are by nature "cognitive misers", meaning they prefer to do as little thinking as possible. Frames provide people a quick and easy way to process information. Hence, people will use the previously mentioned mental filters (a series of which is called a schema) to make sense of incoming messages. This gives the sender and framer of the information enormous power to use these schemas to influence how the receivers will interpret the message. A 2020 published theory suggests that judged usability (i.e., the extent to which a consideration featured in the message is deemed usable for a given subsequent judgment) may be an important mediator of cognitive media effects like framing, agenda setting, and priming. Emphasizing judged usability leads to the revelation that media coverage may not just elevate a particular consideration, but may also actively suppress a consideration, rendering it less usable for subsequent judgments. The news framing process illustrates that among different aspects of an issue, a certain aspect is chosen over others to characterize an issue or event. For example, the issue of unemployment is described in terms of the cheap labor provided by immigrants. Exposure to the news story activates thoughts correspond to immigrants rather than thoughts related to other aspects of the issue (e.g., legislation, education, and cheap imports from other countries) and, at the same time, makes the former thoughts prominent by promoting their importance and relevance to the understanding of the issue at hand. That is, issue perceptions are influenced by the consideration featured in the news story. Thoughts related to neglected considerations become relegated to the degree that thoughts about a featured consideration are magnified. See also Anecdotal value Alternative facts Argumentation theory Bias Choice architecture Code word (figure of speech) Communication theory Connotation Cultural bias Decision making Definition of the situation Demagoguery Died by suicide vs committed suicide Domain of discourse Echo chamber (media) Fallacy of many questions Figure of speech Filter bubble Framing rules in the thought of Arlie Russell Hochschild Freedom of speech Free press Idea networking Language and thought Meme Metaphorical Framing Newspeak Overton window Plus-size rather than fat Political correctness Power word Rhetorical device Semantics Semantic domain Social heuristics Sophism Spin (propaganda) Stovepiping Thought Reform (book) Trope Unspeak (book) Virtue word References Bibliography Aziz, S., Imtiaz, A., & Saeed, R. (2022). Framing COVID-19 in Pakistani mainstream media: An analysis of newspaper editorials. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 9(1), 2043510. Further reading Baars, B. A cognitive theory of consciousness, NY: Cambridge University Press 1988, . Boulding, Kenneth E. (1956). The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society. Michigan University Press. Clark, A. (1997), Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cutting, Hunter and Makani Themba Nixon (2006). Talking the Walk: A Communications Guide for Racial Justice: AK Press Dennett, D. (1978), Brainstorms, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fairhurst, Gail T. and Sarr, Robert A. 1996. The Art of Framing: Managing the Language of Leadership. Jossey-Bass, Inc. Feldman, Jeffrey. (2007), Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Control the Conversation (and Win Elections). Brooklyn, NY: Ig Publishing. Fodor, J.A. (1983), The Modularity of Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fodor, J.A. (1987), "Modules, Frames, Fridgeons, Sleeping Dogs, and the Music of the Spheres", in Pylyshyn (1987). Fodor, J.A. (2000), The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ford, K.M. & Hayes, P.J. (eds.) (1991), Reasoning Agents in a Dynamic World: The Frame Problem, New York: JAI Press. Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper and Row. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Goffman, E. (1959). Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Goodman, N. (1954), Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haselager, W.F.G. (1997). Cognitive science and folk psychology: the right frame of mind. London: Sage Hayes, P.J. (1991), "Artificial Intelligence Meets David Hume: A Reply to Fetzer", in Ford & Hayes (1991). Heal, J. (1996), "Simulation, Theory, and Content", in Theories of Theories of Mind, eds. P. Carruthers & P. Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75–89. Johnson-Cartee, K. (2005). News narrative and news framing: Constructing political reality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kendall, Diana, Sociology In Our Times, Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, Google Print, p. 531 Klandermans, Bert. 1997. The Social Psychology of Protest. Oxford: Blackwell. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leites, N. & Wolf, C., Jr. (1970). Rebellion and authority. Chicago: Markham Publishing Company. McAdam, D., McCarthy, J., & Zald, M. (1996). Introduction: Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Framing Processes—Toward a Synthetic, Comparative Perspective on Social Movements. In D. McAdam, J. McCarthy & M. Zald (Eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements; Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (pp. 1–20). New York: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, J. & Hayes, P.J. (1969), "Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence", in Machine Intelligence 4, ed. D.Michie and B.Meltzer, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 463–502. McDermott, D. (1987), "We've Been Framed: Or Why AI Is Innocent of the Frame Problem", in Pylyshyn (1987). Mithen, S. (1987), The Prehistory of the Mind, London: Thames & Hudson. Pan. Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (2001). Framing as a strategic action in public deliberation. In S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, Jr., & A. E. Grant (Eds.), Framing public life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world, (pp. 35–66). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pan, Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (2005). Framing and the understanding of citizenship. In S. Dunwoody, L. B. Becker, D. McLeod, & G. M. Kosicki (Eds.), Evolution of key mass communication concepts, (pp. 165–204). New York: Hampton Press. Pylyshyn, Zenon W. (ed.) (1987), The Robot's Dilemma: The Frame Problem in Artificial Intelligence, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy and August E. Grant. (2001). Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Maywah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Russell, S. & Wefald, E. (1991), Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shanahan, Murray P. (1997), Solving the Frame Problem: A Mathematical Investigation of the Common Sense Law of Inertia, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Shanahan, Murray P. (2003), "The Frame Problem", in The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, ed. L.Nadel, Macmillan, pp. 144–50. Simon, Herbert (1957), Models of Man, Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting, New York: John Wiley. Tarrow, S. (1983a). "Struggling to Reform: social Movements and policy change during cycles of protest". Western Societies Paper No. 15. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. Tarrow, S. (1983b). "Resource mobilization and cycles of protest: Theoretical reflections and comparative illustrations". Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Detroit, August 31 – September 4. Tilly, C., Tilly, L., & Tilly, R. (1975). The rebellious century, 1830–1930. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Turner, R. H., & Killian, L. M. (1972). Collective Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Willard, Charles Arthur. Liberalism and the Social Grounds of Knowledge Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 199 External links Curry, Tom. 2005. "Frist chills talk of judges deal". "The framing of the issue as 'a fair, up-or-down vote,' Republican strategists believe, is the most advantageous one". MSNBC HBS.edu – "Fixing Price Tag Confusion" (interview), Sean Silverthorne (December 11, 2006) Framing effect' influences decisions: Emotions play a role in decision-making when information is too complex", Charles Q. Choi, NBC (August 3, 2006) Cognitive biases Knowledge representation Media studies Propaganda techniques Prospect theory Psychological warfare Social constructionism

Voting

Voting refers to the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representatives by voting. The procedure for identifying the winners based on votes varies depending on both the country and the political office. Political scientists call these procedures electoral systems, while mathematicians and economists call them social choice rules. The study of these rules and what makes them good or bad is the subject of a branch of welfare economics known as social choice theory. In smaller organizations, voting can occur in many different ways: formally via ballot to elect others for example within a workplace, to elect members of political associations, or to choose roles for others; or informally with a spoken agreement or a gesture like a raised hand. In larger organizations, like countries, voting is generally confined to periodic elections. In politics In a democracy, the government is elected by the people who vote in an election: a way for an electorate to elect, that is choose, from several different candidates. It is more than likely that elections will be between two opposing parties. These two will be the most established and most popular parties in the country. For example, in the US, the competition is between the Republicans and the Democrats. In an indirect democracy, voting is the method by which the person elected (in charge) represents the people, whilst making decisions. Direct democracy is the complete opposite, the people make the policy decisions directly without selecting a representative to do it for them. A majority vote is when more than half of voters vote for the same person or party. However, whilst it is usually said each individual's vote does count, many countries use a combination of factors to decide who has power, not the at-large "popular vote". Most influential of these factors are districts that divide the electorate. For example, in the UK a party winning plurality in a majority of constituencies wins majority government, but they may not always have the most individual votes (i.e. they may have lose the popular vote but still win the seat count). (It is also possible for a party to win plurality in a minority of constituencies (but more than any other one party) and thus win minority government.) All modern liberal democracies use voting by secret ballot to prevent individuals from becoming influenced by other people and to protect their political privacy. The objective of secret ballots is to try to achieve the most authentic outcome, without any risk of pressure, threat, or services linked to one's vote; this way, a person is able to express their actual preferences. Voting often takes place at a polling station but voting can also be done remotely by mail or using internet voting (such as in Estonia). Voting is voluntary in some countries, like the UK, but it may be required by law in others, such as Australia. Electoral systems There are many electoral methods. The purpose of an election may be to choose one person, such as a president, or a group, such as a committee or a parliament. In electing a parliament, either each of many small constituencies can elect a single representative, as in Britain; or each of a lesser number of multi-member constituencies may elect two or more representatives, as in Ireland; or multi-member districts and some single-member districts can be used; or the entire country can be treated as one "at-large" district, as in The Netherlands. Different voting systems use different ballot designs. Some ballots allow only one choice to be selected (single X voting); others allow ranking or selecting multiple options (Ranked ballots). Different voting systems allow each voter to cast a different number of votes - only one (single voting as in First-past-the-post voting, Single non-transferable voting and Single transferable voting); as many as are being elected in a multiple-member district (multiple voting as used in Plurality block voting; more than one but fewer than are being elected in a multiple-member district (Limited voting). Most allow a voter to put just one vote on each candidate, but others allow a voter's votes to be piled on to one candidate. Different voting systems require different levels of support to be elected. Plurality voting (First-past-the-post voting) elects the candidate with more votes than any other single candidate. It does not require the winner to achieve a voting majority, to have more than half of the total votes cast. In First-past-the-post voting, when more than two candidates run, the winner commonly has less than half of the vote, as few as 18 percent was recorded in 2014 in Toronto. In Instant-runoff voting, a candidate must have a majority of votes to be elected, although presence of exhausted votes may mean that the majority at time of final count is not majority of votes cast. In STV, any candidate who takes quota (usually set at much less than half of the votes) is elected; others without quota (but with more votes than any other single candidate) may be declared elected as well. Side effects of First-past-the-post voting include a waste of votes due to vote splitting, a two-party system and political polarization due to electing candidates that do not support centrism. To understand why a race using First-past-the-post voting tends to favor less-centric candidates, consider a simple lab experiment where students in a class vote for their favorite marble. If five marbles are assigned names and are placed "up for election", and if three of them are green, one is red, and one is blue, then a green marble will rarely win the election. The reason for the green's lack of success is vote splitting. The three green marbles will split the votes of those who prefer green. In fact, in this analogy, the only way that a green marble is likely to win is if more than three-fifths of the voters prefer green. If the same number of people prefer green as those who prefer red and blue, that is to say, if one-third of the voters prefer green, one-third prefer blue, and one-third prefer red, then each green marble will only get one-ninth of the vote, if the green marbles each take same number of votes, while the red and blue marbles will each get one-third, putting the green marbles at a serious disadvantage. If the experiment is repeated with other colors, the color that is in the majority (if the majority is split among multiple choices) will still rarely win. In other words, from a purely mathematical perspective, a single-winner system tends to favor a winner that is different from the majority, if the majority runs multiple candidates, and if the minority group runs just one candidate. This minority rule success can also result if multiple winners are elected and voters cast multiple votes (Plurality block voting). But even if the majority is split among multiple candidates, proportionate results can still be produced if votes can be transferred, as under STV, or if multiple winners are elected and each voter has just one vote. Alternatives to First-past-the-post voting include approval voting, two-round, proportional representation, and instant-runoff voting. With approval voting, voters are encouraged to vote for as many candidates as they approve of, so the winner is much more likely to be any one of the five marbles because people who prefer green will be able to vote for every one of the green marbles. With two-round elections, the field of candidates is thinned prior to the second round of voting. In most cases, the winner must receive a majority of the votes, which is more than half. If no candidate obtains a majority in the first round, then the two candidates with the most significant plurality run again for the second round of voting. Variants exist regarding these two points: the requirement for being elected at the first round is sometimes less than 50%, and the rules for participation in the runoff may vary. With single-round ranked voting, such as instant-runoff voting system as used in some elections in Australia and the United States, voters rank each candidate in order of preference (1,2,3,4 etc.). Votes are distributed to each candidate according to the first preferences. If no single candidate has 50% of the vote, then the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and their votes are redistributed according to the voter's nominated order of preference. The process repeats itself until a candidate has 50% or more votes. The system is designed to produce the same result as an exhaustive ballot but using only a single round of voting. Ranked voting is also used in a PR format. PR-STV is used in Australia, Ireland and Malta. Quota is calculated. In say a four-seat constituency, quota (if Droop quota is used) is 20 percent of the valid vote plus 1. Every candidate with quota (of 1st preferences alone or combination of first preferences and later preferences) will be elected. If a candidate has more than a quota and seats are yet to be filled, his/her surplus will be distributed to the other candidates in proportion to all of that candidate's 2nd preferences, in line with secondary preferences marked on the vote if any. If there are still candidates to be elected and no surplus votes to be transferred, the least-popular is eliminated, as above in AV or IRV, and the process continues until four candidates have reached a quota or are declared elected when the field of candidates is thinned to the number of remaining open seats. In the Quota Borda System (QBS), the voters also cast their preferences, 1,2,3,4... as they wish. In the analysis, all 1st preferences are counted; all 2nd preferences are counted; after these preferences have been translated into points per the rules of a Modified Borda Count (MBC), the candidates' points are also counted. Seats are awarded to any candidates with a quota of 1st preferences; to any pair of candidates with two quotas of 1st/2nd preferences; and if seats are still to be filled, to those candidates with the highest MBC scores. In a voting system that uses multiple votes (Plurality block voting), the voter can vote for any subset of the running candidates. So, a voter might vote for Alice, Bob, and Charlie, rejecting Daniel and Emily. Approval voting uses such multiple votes. In a voting system that uses a ranked vote, the voter ranks the candidates in order of preference. For example, they might mark a preference for Bob in the first place, then Emily, then Alice, then Daniel, and finally Charlie. Ranked voting systems, such as those used in Australia and Ireland, use a ranked vote. In a voting system that uses a scored vote (or range vote), the voter gives each alternative a number between one and ten (the upper and lower bounds may vary). See cardinal voting systems. Some "multiple-winner" systems such as the Single Non-Transferable Vote, SNTV, used in Afghanistan and Vanuatu give a single vote or one vote per elector per available position. STV uses single ranked votes; block voting (Plurality-at-large voting) are often used for at-large positions such as on some city councils. Finally, the Condorcet rule is used (sometimes) in decision-making. The voters or elected representatives cast their preferences on one, some, or all options, 1,2,3,4... as in PR-STV or QBS. In the analysis, option A is compared to option B, and if A is more popular than B, then A wins this pairing. Next, A is compared with option C, then D, and so on. Likewise, B is compared with C, D, etc. The option which wins the most pairings, (if there is one), is the Condorcet winner.--> Referendums When the citizens of a country are invited to vote, they are participating in an election. However, people can also vote in referendums and initiatives. Since the end of the eighteenth century, more than five hundred national referendums (including initiatives) were organized in the world; among them, more than three hundred were held in Switzerland. Australia ranked second with dozens of referendums. Most referendums are binary. The first multi-option referendum was held in New Zealand in 1894, and most of them are conducted under a two-round system. New Zealand had a five-option referendum in 1992, while Guam had a six-option plebiscite in 1982, which also offered a blank option, in case some voters wanted to (campaign and) vote for a seventh option. Proxy voting Proxy voting is a form of voting in which a registered citizen who can legally vote passes on his or her vote to a different voter or electorate who will vote in his stead. Anti-voting In South Africa, there is a strong presence of anti-voting campaigns by poor citizens. They make the structural argument that no political party truly represents them. This resulted in the "No Land! No House! No Vote!" campaign, which becomes very prominent each time the country holds elections. The campaign is prominent among three of South Africa's largest social movements: the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, Abahlali baseMjondolo, and the Landless Peoples Movement. Other social movements in other parts of the world also have similar campaigns or non-voting preferences. These include the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and various anarchist-oriented movements. It is possible to make a blank vote, carrying out the act of voting, which may be compulsory, without selecting any candidate or option, often as an act of protest. In some jurisdictions, there is an official none of the above option and it is counted as a valid vote. Usually, blank and null votes are counted (together or separately) but are not considered valid. Voting and information Modern political science has questioned whether average citizens have sufficient political knowledge to cast meaningful votes. A series of studies coming out of the University of Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s argued that many voters lack a basic understanding of current issues, the liberal–conservative ideological dimension, and the relative ideological dilemma that are important to understand when making political decisions. Studies from other institutions have suggested that the physical appearance of candidates is a criterion upon which voters base their decision. Voting advice applications can increase political knowledge enabling to cast informed votes. Religious views Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Old Order Amish, Rastafarians, the Assemblies of Yahweh, and some other religious groups, have a policy of not participating in politics and this extends to voting. Rabbis from all Jewish denominations encourage voting and some even consider it a religious obligation. Meetings and gatherings Whenever several people who do not all agree need to make some decision, voting is a very common way of reaching a decision peacefully. The right to vote is usually restricted to certain people. Members of a society or club, or shareholders of a company, but not outsiders, may elect its officers, or adopt or change its rules, in a similar way to the election of people to official positions. A panel of judges, either formal judicial authorities or judges of the competition, may decide by voting. A group of friends or members of a family may decide which film to see by voting. The method of voting can range from formal submission of written votes, through show of hands, voice voting or audience response systems, to informal noting which outcome seems to be preferred by more people. In deliberative assemblies Some votes are carried out in person if all the people eligible to vote are present. This could be by a show of hands or keypad polling. Deliberative assemblies—bodies that use parliamentary procedure to arrive at decisions—use several methods when voting on motions (formal proposals by a member or members of a deliberative assembly). The regular methods of voting in such bodies are a voice vote, a rising vote, and a show of hands. Additional forms of voting include a recorded vote and balloting. The assembly can decide on the voting method by adopting a motion on it. Voting methods Paper-based methods The most common voting method uses paper ballots on which voters mark their preferences. This may involve marking their support for a candidate or party listed on the ballot, or a write-in where they write out the name of their preferred candidate (if it is not listed). An alternative method that is still paper-based known as ballot letters is used in Israel, where polling booths contain a tray with ballots for each party running in the elections; the ballots are marked with the letter(s) assigned to that party. Voters are given an envelope into which they put the ballot of the party they wish to vote for, before placing the envelope in the ballot box. The same system is also implemented in Latvia. The system is used commonly in open lists or primary elections, where voters must choose a single party whose candidates they are allowed to choose between. Machine voting Machine voting uses voting machines, which may be manual (e.g. lever machines) or electronic. Online voting Some countries allow people to vote online. Estonia was one of the first countries to use online voting: it was first used in their 2005 local elections. Postal voting Many countries allow postal voting, where voters are sent a ballot and return it by post. Open ballot In contrast to a secret ballot, an open ballot takes place in public and is commonly done by a show of hands. An example is the Landsgemeinde system in Switzerland, which is still in use in the cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden, Glarus, Grisons, and Schwyz. Other methods In Gambia, voting is carried out using marbles. The method was introduced in 1965 to deal with illiteracy. Polling stations contain metal drums painted in party colours and emblems with candidates' photos attached to them. Voters are given a marble to place in the drum of their chosen candidate; when dropped into the drum, a bell sounds to register the vote. To avoid confusion, bicycles are banned near polling booths on election day. If the marble is left on top of the drum rather than placed in it, the vote is deemed invalid. A similar system used in social clubs sees voters given a white ball to indicate support and a black ball to indicate opposition. This led to the coining of the term blackballing. See also References External links An Excerpt From The Voting Rights Act of 1965 Voting A history of voting in the United States from the Smithsonian Institution. A New Nation Votes: American Elections Returns 1787-1825 Can I Vote?—a nonpartisan US resource for registering to vote and finding your polling place from the National Association of Secretaries of State. This contains a brief history of voting in Ancient Greece and Rome; see also Electoral system s.v. History. The Canadian Museum of Civilization — A History of the Vote in Canada Elections Parliamentary procedure

Civic education in the United States

Rationale The promotion of a republic and its values has been an important concern for policy-makers – to impact people's political perceptions, to encourage political participation, and to foster the principles enshrined in the Constitution (e.g. liberty, freedom of speech, civil rights). The subject of "Civics" has been integrated into the Curriculum and Content Standards, to enhance the comprehension of democratic values in the educational system. Civic literature has found that "engaging young children in civic activities from an early age is a positive predictor of their participation in later civic life". As an academic subject, Civics has the instructional objective to promote knowledge that is aligned with self-governance and participation in matters of public concern. These objectives advocate for an instruction that encourages active student participation in democratic decision-making environments, such as voting to elect a course representative for a school government, or deciding on actions that will affect the school environment or community. Thus the intersection of individual and collective decision making activities, are critical to shape "individual's moral development". To reach those goals, civic instructors must promote the adoption of certain skills and attitudes such as "respectful argumentation, debate, information literacy", to support "the development of morally responsible individuals who will shape a morally responsible and civically minded society". In the 21st century, young people are less interested in direct political participation (i.e. being in a political party or even voting), but are motivated to use digital media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook). Digital media enable young people to share and exchange ideas rapidly, enabling the coordination of local communities that promote volunteerism and political activism, in topics principally related to human rights and environmental subjects. Young people are constructing and supporting their political identities in the 21st century by using social media, and digital tools (e.g. text messaging, hashtags, videos) to share, post, reply an opinion or attitude about a political/social topic and to promote social mobilization and support through online mechanism to a wide and diverse audience. Therefore, civics' end-goal in the 21st century must be oriented to "empower the learners to find issues in their immediate communities that seem important to the people with whom they live and associate", once "learners have identified with a personal issue and participated in constructing a collective framing for common issues". Current state According to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, one of the purposes of Civic Education is to "foster civic competence and responsibility" which is promoted through the Center for Civic Education’s We the People and Project Citizen initiatives. However, there is a lack of consensus for how this mission should be pursued. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) reviewed state civic education requirements in the United States for 2012. The findings include: All 50 states have social studies standards which include civics and government. 39 states require at least one course in government/civics. 21 states require a state-mandated social studies test which is a decrease from 2001 (34 states). 8 states require students to take a state-mandated government/civics test. 9 states require a social studies test as a requirement for high school graduation. The lack of state-mandated student accountability relating to civics may be a result of a shift in emphasis towards reading and mathematics in response to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. There is a movement to require that states utilize the citizenship test as a graduation requirement, but this is seen as a controversial solution to some educators. Students are also demonstrating that their civic knowledge leaves much to be desired. A National Center for Education Statistics NAEP report card for civics (2010) stated that "levels of civic knowledge in U.S. have remained unchanged or even declined over the past century". Specifically, only 24 percent of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders were at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics. Traditionally, civic education has emphasized the facts of government processes detached from participatory experience. In an effort to combat the existing approach, the National Council for the Social Studies developed the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. The C3 Framework emphasizes "new and active approaches" including the "discussion of controversial issues and current events, deliberation of public issues, service-learning, action civics, participation in simulation and role play, and the use of digital technologies". In the 21st century According to a 2007 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, among teens 12–17 years old, 95% have access to the Internet, 70% go online daily, 80% use social networking sites, and 77% have cell phones. As a result, participatory culture has become a staple for today’s youth, affecting their conceptualization of civic participation. They use Web 2.0 tools (i.e. blogs, podcasts, wikis, social media) to: circulate information (blogs and podcasts); collaborate with peers (wikis); produce and exchange media; and connect with people around the world via social media and online communities. The pervasiveness of participatory digital tools has led to a shift in the way adolescents today perceive civic action and participation. Whereas 20th century civic education embraced the belief of "dutiful citizenship" and civic engagement as a "matter of duty or obligation;" 21st century civic education has shifted to reflect youths' "personally expressive politics" and "peer-to-peer relationships" that promote civic engagement. This shift in students' perceptions has led to classroom civic education experiences that reflect the digital world in which 21st century youth now live, in order to make the content both relevant and meaningful. Civics education classrooms in the 21st century now seek to provide genuine opportunities to actively engage in the consumption, circulation, discussion, and production of civic and political content via Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging, wikis, and social media. Although these tools offer new ways for engagement, interaction, and dialogue, educators have also recognized the need to teach youth how to interact both respectfully and productively with their peers and members of online communities. As a result, many school districts have also begun adopting Media Literacy Frameworks for Engaged Citizenship as a pedagogical approach to prepare students for active participatory citizenship in today’s digital age. This model includes critical analysis of digital media as well as a deep understanding of media literacy as a "collaborative and participatory movement that aims to empower individuals to have a voice and to use it." See also Citizenship education (subject) Civics Legal education in the United States Notes References Further reading Active citizenship Education in the United States

Localism (politics)

Localism is a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity. Localism can be contrasted with regionalism and centralized government, with its opposite being found in unitarism. Localism can also refer to a systematic approach to organizing a central government so that local autonomy is retained rather than following the usual pattern of government and political power becoming centralized over time. On a conceptual level, there are important affinities between localism and deliberative democracy. This concerns mainly the democratic goal of engaging citizens in decisions that affect them. Consequently, localism will encourage stronger democratic and political participatory forums and widening public sphere connectivity. History Localists assert that throughout the world's history, most social and economic institutions are scaled at the local level, as opposed to regional, interregional, or global (basically until the late 19th to the early 20th centuries). Through ongoing forms of colonialism, imperialism and industrialisation local scales become less central. Most proponents of localism position themselves as defending aspects of this way of life; the phrase "relocalization" is often used in this sense. In the 20th century, localism drew heavily on the writings of Leopold Kohr, E.F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry, and Kirkpatrick Sale, among others. More generally, localism draws on a wide range of movements and concerns and it proposes that by re-localizing democratic and economic relationships, social, economic and environmental problems will be more definable and solutions more easily created. They include anarchism, bioregionalism, environmentalism, the Greens, and more specific concerns about food, monetary policy and education. Political parties of all persuasions have also occasionally favored the devolution of power to local authorities. In this vein Alan Milburn, a Labour Party MP, has spoken of "making services more locally accountable, devolving more power to local communities and, in the process, forging a modern relationship between the state, citizens and services" Beginning in the 1970s, a particularly visible strain of localism in the United States was a movement started by Alice Waters to buy locally produced products. This movement originated with organic farming and likely gained impetus because of growing dissatisfaction with organic certification and the failing economic model of industrial agriculture for small farmers. While the advocates of local consumption draw on protectionist arguments, they also appealed primarily to an environmental argument: that pollution caused by transporting goods was a major externality in a global economy, and one that "localvores" could greatly diminish. Also, environmental issues can be addressed when decision-making power is held by those affected by the issues instead of power sources that do not understand the needs of local communities. Political philosophy Localism as a philosophy is related to the principle of subsidiarity. In the early 21st century, localists have frequently found themselves aligned with critics of globalisation. Variants of localism are prevalent within the Green movement. According to an article in International Socialism, localism of this sort seeks to "answer to the problems created by globalisation" with "calls to minimise international trade and to seek to establish economies based on ‘local’ self-sufficiency only." Some localists believe that society should be organised politically along community lines, with each community being free to conduct its own business in whatever fashion its people see fit. The size of the communities is defined such that their members are both familiar and dependent on each other, a size something along the lines of a small town or village. In reference to localism, Edward Goldsmith, former editor of The Ecologist magazine, claims: "The problems facing the world today can only be solved by restoring the functioning of those natural systems which once satisfied our needs, i.e. by fully exploiting those incomparable resources which are individual people, families, communities and ecosystems, which together make up the biosphere or real world" Tip O'Neill, a longtime Democratic Speaker of the House in the US Congress, once famously declared that "All politics is local". He eventually wrote a book by that name: All Politics Is Local: And Other Rules of the Game. Localism and populism Wayne Yeung questions the assumption that localism is a sub-school of European-American populism. Yeung raised an example in which localism is a cultural or civic value rather than a value that supports ethnic understanding in Hong Kong identity politics. Jane Wills argued that an increasing numbers of populist politicians are endorsing localism as a framework for public policy. She defined populism as a form of politics that involves people speaking in a register that is authentic to the experiences and needs of those people. In other words, most likely Populist Party policies would contradict parties that support the elites. She also used the term "anti-politics" to describe localist politicians because they stand against mainstream politics. She used the UK Independence Party (UKIP) as an example of a party adopting localism into their policies. Mainstream politicians from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties were threatened by the rise of UKIP. Localism and developing countries Many localists are concerned with the problems of developing countries. Many advocate that developing countries should aim to rely on their own goods and services to escape from what they see are the unfair trade relations with the developed world. George Monbiot claims this idea does not recognise the fact that, even if developing countries often get a raw deal in trade relations, refusing to trade at all would be a significant blow, as the countries need the revenue generated by trade. Some localists are also against immigration from poor countries to rich ones. One of the problems they claim results from such immigration is the drain on the intellectual resources of poor countries, so called brain drain. For example, in the past decade, Bulgaria is estimated to have lost more than 50,000 qualified scientists and skilled workers through emigration every year. About a fifth of them were highly educated specialists in chemistry, biology, medicine and physics. International relations Some localists are against political intervention and peace keeping measures. They believe that communities should find solutions to their own problems and in their own time, in whatever fashion they decide. They believe that all societies are capable of achieving long term peace once given the opportunity to do so. Localist activism Localism usually describes social measures or trends which emphasise or value local and small-scale phenomena. This is in contrast to large, all-encompassing frameworks for action or belief. Localism can therefore be contrasted with globalisation, and in some cases localist activism has parallels with opposition to corporate-led globalization. Localism can be geographical, but there are also transnational linkages. Localist movements are often organized in support of locally owned, independent businesses and nonprofit organizations. Although the focus of this aspect of localist activism is on "buy local," "support local food," and "bank local" campaigns, some organizations and businesses also combine the goal of increased local ownership with environmental sustainability and social fairness goals. Examples of localism are: Support for local food networks, such as farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, community gardens, farm-to-table programs, food cooperatives, and restaurants that serve local food. The slow food movement, using diverse, seasonal, natural food in reaction to multinational merchandising of food which is uniform, produced using industrial methods, and called fast food. Support for locally family businesses, small craftsmans and farmers, traditional and local communities of small owners (craft guilds, farming circles and other), community banks and credit unions, such as the following organizations: American Independent Business Alliance, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and Move Your Money. "The Benefits of Doing Business Locally" an essay by Jeff Milchen, American Independent Business Alliance co-founder, covers many arguments for local business ownership and patronage. Localism in media to support a diverse news media in the face of increasing corporate control. The US Federal Communications Commission made use of this term when seeking input on its rules, stating "promoting localism is a key goal of the Commission’s media ownership rules." Localism in government structures, which can include: Tertiary government where small community councils make relevant decisions, with some degree of independence from local or national government. Workers' councils, where the employees of a particular workplace discuss and negotiate with their employer, rather have this done by a national union which may be remote from local issues. Federalism and devolution. Religion (Protestant): Exclusive localism holds that there can't be more than one legitimate institutionally visible church at one given location, the variation of which varies but is usually held to be either a city or a neighbourhood. Localism is more generally the congregationalist idea that each local church should be autonomous, only extended to reject any formal association of churches. It is specially relevant among Baptists, where localists reject the forming of Conventions. Religion (Churches of Christ): The congregationalist idea of local autonomy is a cornerstone of restoration movement fellowships that identify as churches of Christ or Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Founders of the movement declared their independence from various denominations, seeking a fresh start to restore the New Testament church, and abandoning creeds. The names "Church of Christ," "Christian Church" and "Disciples of Christ" were adopted by the movement because they believed these terms to be biblical and not man made. A converging of Christians across denominational lines in search of a return to a hypothesized original, "pre-denominational" Christianity. Participants in this movement sought to base doctrine and practice on the Bible alone, rather than recognizing the traditional councils and denominational hierarchies that had come to define Christianity since the 1st century. Members of the Churches of Christ believe that Jesus founded only one church, that the current divisions between Christians are not God's will, and that the only basis for restoring Christian unity is the Bible. They typically prefer to be known simply as "Christians", without any further religious or denominational identification. They see themselves as recreating the New Testament church established by Christ. Churches of Christ generally share these theological beliefs: Refusal to hold to any formalized creeds or statements of faith, preferring instead a reliance on the Bible alone for doctrine and practice; Autonomous, congregational church organization without denominational oversight; Local governance by a plurality of male elders; One of the largest divisions within churches of Christ was due to controversy of foreign missionary work. Opponents of what they dubbed "Institutionalism" argued against it both as a drain on local congregations and as sinful if done in cooperation with other congregations. This belief extended to cooperative support of orphanages, homes, large-scale radio and TV programs and ministries. The Restoration Movement is so averse to association with other congregations that they renounce the term "protestant" distancing their churches from any association to any denomination; even one they would have to "protest" and evolve from. See also References Sources McKibben, Bill. Eaarth. New York: Time /Henry Holt, 2010. Business & the Environment. Sep 2011, Vol. 22 Issue 9, pp. 1–4 Pugh, Michael, (30 June 2014), 'Centralism versus localism? Democracy versus efficiency? The perennial challenges of Scottish local government organisation', History & Policy. External links Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America "Localism" – James Howard Kunstler's view of "Localism" "The Localization Reader" – De Young and Princen's view on the process of "localization." Communitarianism Libertarianism Agrarian politics New Urbanism Political ideologies Political theories Rural culture Social philosophy

Corporate statism

Corporate statism, state corporatism, or simply corporatism, is a political culture and a form of corporatism the proponents of which claim or believe that corporate groups should form the basis of society and the state. By this principle, the state requires all citizens to belong to one of several officially designated interest groups (based generally on economic sector), which consequently have great control of their members. Such interest groups thus attain public status, and they or their representatives participate with national policymaking, at least formally. Societies have existed historically which exemplified corporate statism, for instance as propounded by Othmar Spann in Austria and implemented by Benito Mussolini in Italy (1922–1943), António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo in Portugal (1933–1974) and by the interwar Federal State of Austria. After World War II, corporate statism influenced the rapid development of South Korea and Japan. Corporate statism most commonly manifests itself as a ruling party acting as a mediator between the workers, capitalists and other major state interests by incorporating them institutionally into the government. Corporatist systems were most prevalent during the mid-20th century in Europe and later elsewhere in developing countries. One criticism is that interests, both social and economic, are so diverse that a state cannot possibly define or organize them effectively by incorporating them. Corporate statism differs from corporate nationalism in that it is a social mode of organization rather than economic nationalism operating by means of private business corporations. The topic remains controversial in some countries, including South Korea, Japan, and Portugal. See also Chaebol — a type of very large South Korean business conglomerate. Corporatism — ideology of which corporate statism is a subset. Corporatocracy — a government dominated by business interests, often mistaken for corporatism. East Asian Miracle — an economic transformation in East and Southeast Asian countries. Fascism — a political ideology that sometimes includes corporate statism as a component. Miracle on the Han River — an economic transformation in South Korea. Folkhemmet — The name givern to the Swedish variant of corporatism, sometimes called Social corporatism. State capitalism — an economic form in which state-controlled enterprises dominate the economy and operate for-profit. Zaibatsu — a type of very large Japanese business conglomerate. References Corporatism Political science terminology Statism Totalitarianism ja:コーポラティズム

Democratic peace theory

Proponents of democratic peace theory argue that both electoral and republican forms of democracy are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Different advocates of this theory suggest that several factors are responsible for motivating peace between democratic states. Individual theorists maintain "monadic" forms of this theory (democracies are in general more peaceful in their international relations); "dyadic" forms of this theory (democracies do not go to war with other democracies); and "systemic" forms of this theory (more democratic states in the international system makes the international system more peaceful). In terms of norms and identities, it is hypothesized that democratic publics are more dovish in their interactions with other democracies, and that democratically elected leaders are more likely to resort to peaceful resolution in disputes (both in domestic politics and international politics). In terms of structural or institutional constraints, it is hypothesized that institutional checks and balances, accountability of leaders to the public, and larger winning coalitions make it harder for democratic leaders to go to war unless there are clearly favorable ratio of benefits to costs. These structural constraints, along with the transparent nature of democratic politics, make it harder for democratic leaders to mobilize for war and initiate surprise attacks, which reduces fear and inadvertent escalation to war. The transparent nature of democratic political systems, as well as deliberative debates (involving opposition parties, the media, experts, and bureaucrats), make it easier for democratic states to credibly signal their intentions. The concept of audience costs entails that threats issued by democratic leaders are taken more seriously because democratic leaders will be electorally punished by their publics from backing down from threats, which reduces the risk of misperception and miscalculation by states. The connection between peace and democracy has long been recognized, but theorists disagree about the direction of causality. The democratic peace theory posits that democracy causes peace, while the territorial peace theory makes the opposite claim that peace causes democracy. Other theories argue that omitted variables explain the correlation better than democratic peace theory. Alternative explanations for the correlation of peace among democracies include arguments revolving around institutions, commerce, interdependence, alliances, US world dominance and political stability. History Though the democratic peace theory was not rigorously or scientifically studied until the 1960s, the basic principles of the concept had been argued as early as the 18th century in the works of philosopher Immanuel Kant and political theorist Thomas Paine. Kant foreshadowed the theory in his essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch written in 1795, although he thought that a world with only constitutional republics was only one of several necessary conditions for a perpetual peace. In earlier but less cited works, Thomas Paine made similar or stronger claims about the peaceful nature of republics. Paine wrote in "Common Sense" in 1776: "The Republics of Europe are all (and we may say always) in peace." Paine argued that kings would go to war out of pride in situations where republics would not. French historian and social scientist Alexis de Tocqueville also argued, in Democracy in America (1835–1840), that democratic nations were less likely to wage war. Herbert Spencer also argued for a relationship between democracy and peace. Dean Babst, a criminologist, was the first to do statistical research on this topic. His academic paper supporting the theory was published in 1964 in Wisconsin Sociologist; he published a slightly more popularized version, in 1972, in the trade journal Industrial Research. Both versions initially received little attention. Melvin Small and J. David Singer responded; they found an absence of wars between democratic states with two "marginal exceptions", but denied that this pattern had statistical significance. This paper was published in the Jerusalem Journal of International Relations which finally brought more widespread attention to the theory, and started the academic debate. A 1983 paper by political scientist Michael W. Doyle contributed further to popularizing the theory. Maoz and Abdolali extended the research to lesser conflicts than wars. Bremer, Maoz and Russett found the correlation between democracy and peacefulness remained significant after controlling for many possible confounding variables. This moved the theory into the mainstream of social science. Supporters of realism in international relations and others responded by raising many new objections. Other researchers attempted more systematic explanations of how democracy might cause peace, and of how democracy might also affect other aspects of foreign relations such as alliances and collaboration. There have been numerous further studies in the field since these pioneering works. Most studies have found some form of democratic peace exists, although neither methodological disputes nor doubtful cases are entirely resolved Definitions Research on the democratic peace theory has to define "democracy" and "peace" (or, more often, "war"). Defining democracy Democracies have been defined differently by different theorists and researchers; this accounts for some of the variations in their findings. Some examples: Small and Singer define democracy as a nation that (1) holds periodic elections in which the opposition parties are as free to run as government parties, (2) allows at least 10% of the adult population to vote, and (3) has a parliament that either controls or enjoys parity with the executive branch of the government. Doyle requires (1) that "liberal regimes" have market or private property economics, (2) they have policies that are internally sovereign, (3) they have citizens with juridical rights, and (4) they have representative governments. Either 30% of the adult males were able to vote or it was possible for every man to acquire voting rights as by attaining enough property. He allows greater power to hereditary monarchs than other researchers; for example, he counts the rule of Louis-Philippe of France as a liberal regime. Ray requires that at least 50% of the adult population is allowed to vote and that there has been at least one peaceful, constitutional transfer of executive power from one independent political party to another by means of an election. This definition excludes long periods often viewed as democratic. For example, the United States until 1800, India from independence until 1979, and Japan until 1993 were all under a dominant-party system, and thus would not be counted under this definition. Rummel states that "By democracy is meant liberal democracy, where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at least 2/3 of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights." Non-binary classifications The above definitions are binary, classifying nations into either democracies or non-democracies. Many researchers have instead used more finely grained scales. One example is the Polity data series which scores each state on two scales, one for democracy and one for autocracy, for each year since 1800; as well as several others. The use of the Polity Data has varied. Some researchers have done correlations between the democracy scale and belligerence; others have treated it as a binary classification by (as its maker does) calling all states with a high democracy score and a low autocracy score democracies; yet others have used the difference of the two scores, sometimes again making this into a binary classification. Young democracies Several researchers have observed that many of the possible exceptions to the democratic peace have occurred when at least one of the involved democracies was very young. Many of them have therefore added a qualifier, typically stating that the peacefulness apply to democracies older than three years. Rummel argues that this is enough time for "democratic procedures to be accepted, and democratic culture to settle in." Additionally, this may allow for other states to actually come to the recognition of the state as a democracy. Mansfield and Snyder, while agreeing that there have been no wars between mature liberal democracies, state that countries in transition to democracy are especially likely to be involved in wars. They find that democratizing countries are even more warlike than stable democracies, stable autocracies or even countries in transition towards autocracy. So, they suggest caution in eliminating these wars from the analysis, because this might hide a negative aspect of the process of democratization. A reanalysis of the earlier study's statistical results emphasizes that the above relationship between democratization and war can only be said to hold for those democratizing countries where the executive lacks sufficient power, independence, and institutional strength. A review cites several other studies finding that the increase in the risk of war in democratizing countries happens only if many or most of the surrounding nations are undemocratic. If wars between young democracies are included in the analysis, several studies and reviews still find enough evidence supporting the stronger claim that all democracies, whether young or established, go into war with one another less frequently; while some do not. Defining war Quantitative research on international wars usually defines war as a military conflict with more than 1000 killed in battle in one year. This is the definition used in the Correlates of War Project which has also supplied the data for many studies on war. It turns out that most of the military conflicts in question fall clearly above or below this threshold. Some researchers have used different definitions. For example, Weart defines war as more than 200 battle deaths. Russett, when looking at Ancient Greece, only requires some real battle engagement, involving on both sides forces under state authorization. Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs), in the Correlates of War Project classification, are lesser conflicts than wars. Such a conflict may be no more than military display of force with no battle deaths. MIDs and wars together are "militarized interstate conflicts" or MICs. MIDs include the conflicts that precede a war; so the difference between MIDs and MICs may be less than it appears. Statistical analysis and concerns about degrees of freedom are the primary reasons for using MID's instead of actual wars. Wars are relatively rare. An average ratio of 30 MIDs to one war provides a richer statistical environment for analysis. Monadic vs. dyadic peace Most research is regarding the dyadic peace, that democracies do not fight one another. Very few researchers have supported the monadic peace, that democracies are more peaceful in general. There are some recent papers that find a slight monadic effect. Müller and Wolff, in listing them, agree "that democracies on average might be slightly, but not strongly, less warlike than other states," but general "monadic explanations are neither necessary nor convincing." They note that democracies have varied greatly in their belligerence against non-democracies. Possible exceptions Some scholars support the democratic peace on probabilistic grounds: since many wars have been fought since democracies first arose, we might expect a proportionate number of wars to have occurred between democracies, if democracies fought each other as freely as other pairs of states; but proponents of democratic peace theory claim that the number is much less than might be expected. However, opponents of the theory argue this is mistaken and claim there are numerous examples of wars between democracies. Historically, troublesome cases for the Democratic peace theory include the Sicilian Expedition, the War of 1812, the U.S. Civil War, the Fashoda Crisis, conflicts between Ecuador and Peru, the Cod Wars, the Spanish–American War, and the Kargil War. Doyle cites the Paquisha War and the Lebanese air force's intervention in the Six-Day War. The total number of cases suggested in the literature is at least 50. The data set Bremer was using showed one exception, the French-Thai War of 1940; Gleditsch sees the state of war between Finland and United Kingdom during World War II, as a special case, which should probably be treated separately: an incidental state of war between democracies during large and complex war with hundreds of belligerents and the constant shifting of geopolitical and diplomatic boundaries. However, the British did conduct a few military actions of minor scope against the Finns, more to demonstrate their alliance with the Soviets than to actually engage in war with Finland. Page Fortna discusses the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the Kargil War as exceptions, finding the latter to be the most significant. Conflict initiation According to a 2017 review study, "there is enough evidence to conclude that democracy does cause peace at least between democracies, that the observed correlation between democracy and peace is not spurious". Most studies have looked only at who is involved in the conflicts and ignored the question of who initiated the conflict. In many conflicts both sides argue that the other side was the initiator. Several researchers have argued that studying conflict initiation is of limited value, because existing data about conflict initiation may be especially unreliable. Even so, several studies have examined this. Reitner and Stam argue that autocracies initiate conflicts against democracies more frequently than democracies do against autocracies. Quackenbush and Rudy, while confirming Reiter and Stam's results, find that democracies initiate wars against non-democracies more frequently than non-democracies do to each other. Several following studies have studied how different types of autocracies with different institutions vary regarding conflict initiation. Personalistic and military dictatorships may be particularly prone to conflict initiation, as compared to other types of autocracy such as one-party states, but also more likely to be targeted in a war having other initiators. One 2017 study found that democracies are no more likely to settle border disputes peacefully than non-democracies. Internal violence and genocide Most of this article discusses research on relations between states. However, there is also evidence that democracies have less internal systematic violence. For instance, one study finds that the most democratic and the most authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes the most. The probability for a civil war is also increased by political change, regardless whether toward greater democracy or greater autocracy. Intermediate regimes continue to be the most prone to civil war, regardless of the time since the political change. In the long run, since intermediate regimes are less stable than autocracies, which in turn are less stable than democracies, durable democracy is the most probable end-point of the process of democratization. Abadie's study finds that the most democratic nations have the least terrorism. Harff finds that genocide and politicide are rare in democracies. Rummel finds that the more democratic a regime, the less its democide. He finds that democide has killed six times as many people as battles. Davenport and Armstrong II list several other studies and states: "Repeatedly, democratic political systems have been found to decrease political bans, censorship, torture, disappearances and mass killing, doing so in a linear fashion across diverse measurements, methodologies, time periods, countries, and contexts." It concludes: "Across measures and methodological techniques, it is found that below a certain level, democracy has no impact on human rights violations, but above this level democracy influences repression in a negative and roughly linear manner." They also state that thirty years worth of statistical research has revealed that only two variables decrease human rights violations: political democracy and economic development. Abulof and Goldman add a caveat, focusing on the contemporary Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Statistically, a MENA democracy makes a country more prone to both the onset and incidence of civil war, and the more democratic a MENA state is, the more likely it is to experience violent intrastate strife. Moreover, anocracies do not seem to be predisposed to civil war, either worldwide or in MENA. Looking for causality beyond correlation, they suggest that democracy's pacifying effect is partly mediated through societal subscription to self-determination and popular sovereignty. This may turn “democratizing nationalism” to a long-term prerequisite, not just an immediate hindrance, to peace and democracy. Explanations These theories have traditionally been categorized into two groups: explanations that focus on democratic norms and explanations that focus on democratic political structures. They usually are meant to be explanations for little violence between democracies, not for a low level of internal violence in democracies. Several of these mechanisms may also apply to countries of similar systems. The book Never at War finds evidence that the oligarchic republics common in ancient Greece and medieval and early modern Europe hardly ever made war on one another. One example is the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in which the Sejm resisted and vetoed most royal proposals for war, like those of Władysław IV Vasa. A study by V-Dem Institute found both interbranch constraint on the executive and civil society activism as the mechanism for democratic peace but found accountability provided directly by elections not as crucial. Democratic norms One example from the first group is that liberal democratic culture may make the leaders accustomed to negotiation and compromise. Policy makers who have built their careers within a political culture of non-violent accommodations with domestic rivals, unlike autocrats who typically hold power through the threat of coercion, will be inclined toward non-violent methods abroad. Another that a belief in human rights may make people in democracies reluctant to go to war, especially against other democracies. The decline in colonialism, also by democracies, may be related to a change in perception of non-European peoples and their rights. Bruce Russett also argues that the democratic culture affects the way leaders resolve conflicts. In addition, he holds that a social norm emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century; that democracies should not fight each other, which strengthened when the democratic culture and the degree of democracy increased, for example by widening the franchise. Increasing democratic stability allowed partners in foreign affairs to perceive a nation as reliably democratic. The alliances between democracies during the two World Wars and the Cold War also strengthened the norms. He sees less effective traces of this norm in Greek antiquity. Hans Köchler relates the question of transnational democracy to empowering the individual citizen by involving him, through procedures of direct democracy, in a country's international affairs, and he calls for the restructuring of the United Nations Organization according to democratic norms. He refers in particular to the Swiss practice of participatory democracy. Mousseau argues that it is market-oriented development that creates the norms and values that explain both democracy and the peace. In less developed countries individuals often depend on social networks that impose conformity to in-group norms and beliefs, and loyalty to group leaders. When jobs are plentiful on the market, in contrast, as in market-oriented developed countries, individuals depend on a strong state that enforces contracts equally. Cognitive routines emerge of abiding by state law rather than group leaders, and, as in contracts, tolerating differences among individuals. Voters in marketplace democracies thus accept only impartial ‘liberal’ governments, and constrain leaders to pursue their interests in securing equal access to global markets and in resisting those who distort such access with force. Marketplace democracies thus share common foreign policy interests in the supremacy—and predictability—of international law over brute power politics, and equal and open global trade over closed trade and imperial preferences. When disputes do originate between marketplace democracies, they are less likely than others to escalate to violence because both states, even the stronger one, perceive greater long-term interests in the supremacy of law over power politics. Braumoeller argues that liberal norms of conflict resolution vary because liberalism takes many forms. By examining survey results from the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, the author demonstrates that liberalism in that region bears a stronger resemblance to 19th-century liberal nationalism than to the sort of universalist, Wilsonian liberalism described by democratic peace theorists, and that, as a result, liberals in the region are more, not less, aggressive than non-liberals. A 2013 study by Jessica Weeks and Michael Tomz found through survey experiments that the public was less supportive of war in cases involving fellow democracies. Democratic political structures The case for institutional constraints goes back to Immanuel Kant, who wrote: Democracy thus gives influence to those most likely to be killed or wounded in wars, and their relatives and friends (and to those who pay the bulk of the war taxes.) This monadic theory must, however, explain why democracies do attack non-democratic states. One explanation is that these democracies were threatened or otherwise were provoked by the non-democratic states. Doyle argued that the absence of a monadic peace is only to be expected: the same ideologies that cause liberal states to be at peace with each other inspire idealistic wars with the illiberal, whether to defend oppressed foreign minorities or avenge countrymen settled abroad. Doyle also notes liberal states do conduct covert operations against each other; the covert nature of the operation, however, prevents the publicity otherwise characteristic of a free state from applying to the question. Charles Lipson argues that four factors common in democracies give them a "contracting advantage" that leads to a dyadic democratic peace: (1) Greater transparency, (2) Greater continuity, (3) Electoral incentives for leaders to keep promises, and (4) Constitutional governance. Studies show that democratic states are more likely than autocratic states to win the wars that they start. One explanation is that democracies, for internal political and economic reasons, have greater resources. This might mean that democratic leaders are unlikely to select other democratic states as targets because they perceive them to be particularly formidable opponents. One study finds that interstate wars have important impacts on the fate of political regimes, and that the probability that a political leader will fall from power in the wake of a lost war is particularly high in democratic states. As described by Gelpi and Griesdorf, several studies have argued that liberal leaders face institutionalized constraints that impede their capacity to mobilize the state's resources for war without the consent of a broad spectrum of interests. Survey results that compare the attitudes of citizens and elites in the Soviet successor states are consistent with this argument. Moreover, these constraints are readily apparent to other states and cannot be manipulated by leaders. Thus, democracies send credible signals to other states of an aversion to using force. These signals allow democratic states to avoid conflicts with one another, but they may attract aggression from non-democratic states. Democracies may be pressured to respond to such aggression—perhaps even preemptively—through the use of force. Also as described by Gelpi and Griesdorf, studies have argued that when democratic leaders do choose to escalate international crises, their threats are taken as highly credible, since there must be a relatively large public opinion for these actions. In disputes between liberal states, the credibility of their bargaining signals allows them to negotiate a peaceful settlement before mobilization. A 2017 study by Jeff Carter found evidence that democratic states are slower to mobilize for war. An explanation based on game theory similar to the last two above is that the participation of the public and the open debate send clear and reliable information regarding the intentions of democracies to other states. In contrast, it is difficult to know the intentions of non-democratic leaders, what effect concessions will have, and if promises will be kept. Thus there will be mistrust and unwillingness to make concessions if at least one of the parties in a dispute is a non-democracy. The risk factors for certain types of state have, however, changed since Kant's time. In the quote above, Kant points to the lack of popular support for war – first that the populace will directly or indirectly suffer in the event of war – as a reason why republics will not tend to go to war. The number of American troops killed or maimed versus the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians maimed and killed in the American-Iraqi conflict is indicative. This may explain the relatively great willingness of democratic states to attack weak opponents: the Iraq war was, initially at least, highly popular in the United States. The case of the Vietnam War might, nonetheless, indicate a tipping point where publics may no longer accept continuing attrition of their soldiers (even while remaining relatively indifferent to the much higher loss of life on the part of the populations attacked). Coleman uses economic cost-benefit analysis to reach conclusions similar to Kant's. Coleman examines the polar cases of autocracy and liberal democracy. In both cases, the costs of war are assumed to be borne by the people. In autocracy, the autocrat receives the entire benefits of war, while in a liberal democracy the benefits are dispersed among the people. Since the net benefit to an autocrat exceeds the net benefit to a citizen of a liberal democracy, the autocrat is more likely to go to war. The disparity of benefits and costs can be so high that an autocrat can launch a welfare-destroying war when his net benefit exceeds the total cost of war. Contrarily, the net benefit of the same war to an individual in a liberal democracy can be negative so that he would not choose to go to war. This disincentive to war is increased between liberal democracies through their establishment of linkages, political and economic, that further raise the costs of war between them. Therefore, liberal democracies are less likely to go war, especially against each other. Coleman further distinguishes between offensive and defensive wars and finds that liberal democracies are less likely to fight defensive wars that may have already begun due to excessive discounting of future costs. Brad LeVeck and Neil Narang argue that democratic states are less likely to produce decision-making errors in crises due to a larger and more diverse set of actors who are involved in the foreign policy decision-making process. Using selectorate theory, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson and Alastair Smith argue that the democratic peace stems in part from the fact that democratic leaders sustain their power through large winning coalitions, which means that democratic leaders devote more resources to war, have an advantage in war, and choose wars that they are highly likely to win. These leads democratic states to avoid one another, but war with weak non-democratic states. Audience costs A prominent rational choice argument for the democratic peace is that democracies carry greater audience costs than authoritarian states, which makes them better at signaling their intentions in interstate disputes. Arguments regarding the credibility of democratic states in disputes has been subject to debate among international relations scholars. Two studies from 2001, using the MID and ICB datasets, provided empirical support for the notion that democracies were more likely to issue effective threats. However, a 2012 study by Alexander B. Downes and Todd S. Sechser found that existing datasets were not suitable to draw any conclusions as to whether democratic states issued more effective threats. They constructed their own dataset specifically for interstate military threats and outcomes, which found no relationship between regime type and effective threats. A 2017 study which recoded flaws in the MID dataset ultimately conclude, "that there are no regime-based differences in dispute reciprocation, and prior findings may be based largely on poorly coded data." Other scholars have disputed the democratic credibility argument, questioning its causal logic and empirical validity. Research by Jessica Weeks argued that some authoritarian regime types have similar audience costs as in democratic states. A 2021 study found that Americans perceived democracies to be more likely to back down in crises, which contradicts the expectations of the audience costs literature. Democracy differences One general criticism motivating research of different explanations is that actually the theory cannot claim that "democracy causes peace", because the evidence for democracies being, in general, more peaceful is very slight or nonexistent; it only can support the claim that "joint democracy causes peace". According to Rosato, this casts doubts on whether democracy is actually the cause because, if so, a monadic effect would be expected. Perhaps the simplest explanation to such perceived anomaly (but not the one the Realist Rosato prefers, see the section on Realist explanations below) is that democracies are not peaceful to each other because they are democratic, but rather because they are similar in democratic scores. This line of thought started with several independent observations of an "Autocratic Peace" effect, a reduced probability of war (obviously no author claims its absence) between states which are both non-democratic, or both highly so. This has led to the hypothesis that democratic peace emerges as a particular case when analyzing a subset of states which are, in fact, similar. Or, that similarity in general does not solely affect the probability of war, but only coherence of strong political regimes such as full democracies and stark autocracies. Autocratic peace and the explanation based on democratic similarity. is a relatively recent development, and opinions about its value are varied. Henderson builds a model considering political similarity, geographic distance and economic interdependence as its main variables, and concludes that democratic peace is a statistical artifact which disappears when the above variables are taken into account. Werner finds a conflict reducing effect from political similarity in general, but with democratic dyads being particularly peaceful, and noting some differences in behavior between democratic and autocratic dyads with respect to alliances and power evaluation. Beck, King, and Zeng use neural networks to show two distinct low probability zones, corresponding to high democracy and high autocracy. Petersen uses a different statistical model and finds that autocratic peace is not statistically significant, and that the effect attributed to similarity is mostly driven by the pacifying effect of joint democracy. Ray similarly disputes the weight of the argument on logical grounds, claiming that statistical analysis on "political similarity" uses a main variable which is an extension of "joint democracy" by linguistic redefinition, and so it is expected that the war reducing effects are carried on in the new analysis. Bennett builds a direct statistical model based on a triadic classification of states into "democratic", "autocratic" and "mixed". He finds that autocratic dyads have a 35% reduced chance of going into any type of armed conflict with respect to a reference mixed dyad. Democratic dyads have a 55% reduced chance. This effect gets stronger when looking at more severe conflicts; for wars (more than 1000 battle deaths), he estimates democratic dyads to have an 82% lower risk than autocratic dyads. He concludes that autocratic peace exists, but democratic peace is clearly stronger. However, he finds no relevant pacifying effect of political similarity, except at the extremes of the scale. To summarize a rather complex picture, there are no less than four possible stances on the value of this criticism: Political similarity, plus some complementary variables, explains everything. Democratic peace is a statistical artifact. Henderson subscribes to this view. Political similarity has a pacifying effect, but democracy makes it stronger. Werner would probably subscribe to this view. Political similarity in general has little or no effect, except at the extremes of the democracy-autocracy scale: a democratic peace and an autocratic peace exist separately, with the first one being stronger, and may have different explanations. Bennett holds this view, and Kinsella mentions this as a possibility Political similarity has little or no effect and there is no evidence for autocratic peace. Petersen and Ray are among defendants of this view. Interactive model of democratic peace The interactive model of democratic peace is a combination of democratic similarity with the traditional model of democratic peace theory demonstrated on V-Dem Democracy Indices. Criticism There are several logically distinguishable classes of criticism. They usually apply to no wars or few MIDs between democracies, not to little systematic violence in established democracies. In addition, there have been a number of wars between democracies. The 1987–1989 JVP insurrection in Sri Lanka is an example in which politicide was committed by a democratic regime, resulting in the deaths of at least 13,000 and 30,000 suspected JVP members or alleged supporters. Statistical significance One study has argued that there have been as many wars between democracies as one would expect between any other couple of states. Its authors conclude that the argument for democratic peace "rests in an ambiguity", since empirical evidence not confirm neither deny democratic pacifism, and strongly relies upon what degree of democracy makes a government democratic; according to them "because perfect democracy is infeasible, one can always sidestep counter-evidence by raising the bar of democracy". Others state that, although there may be some evidence for democratic peace, the data sample or the time span may be too small to assess any definitive conclusions. For example, Gowa finds evidence for democratic peace to be insignificant before 1939, because of the too small number of democracies, and offers an alternate realist explanation for the following period. Gowa's use of statistics has been criticized, with several other studies and reviews finding different or opposing results. However, this can be seen as the longest-lasting criticism to the theory; as noted earlier, also some supporters agree that the statistical sample for assessing its validity is limited or scarce, at least if only full-scale wars are considered. According to one study, which uses a rather restrictive definition of democracy and war, there were no wars between jointly democratic couples of states in the period from 1816 to 1992. Assuming a purely random distribution of wars between states, regardless of their democratic character, the predicted number of conflicts between democracies would be around ten. So, Ray argues that the evidence is statistically significant, but that it is still conceivable that, in the future, even a small number of inter-democratic wars would cancel out such evidence. Peace comes before democracy The territorial peace theory argues that peace leads to democracy more than democracy leads to peace. This argument is supported by historical studies showing that peace almost always comes before democracy and that states do not develop democracy until all border disputes have been settled. These studies indicate that there is strong evidence that peace causes democracy but little evidence that democracy causes peace. The hypothesis that peace causes democracy is supported by psychological and cultural theories. Christian Welzel's human empowerment theory posits that existential security leads to emancipative cultural values and support for a democratic political organization. This also follows from the so-called regality theory based on evolutionary psychology. The territorial peace theory explains why countries in conflict with their neighbor countries are unlikely to develop democracy. The democratic peace theory is more relevant for peace between non-neighbor countries and for relations between countries that are already at peace with each other. Third factors causing both democracy and peace Several other theories argue that omitted variables explain both peace and democracy. Variables that may explain both democracy and peace include institutions, commerce, interdependence, alliances, US world dominance and political stability. These theories are further explained under Other explanations. Wars against non-democracies Critics of Democratic Peace theory note that liberal states often engage in conflicts with non-liberal states they deem "rogue," "failed," or "evil." Several studies fail to confirm that democracies are less likely to wage war than autocracies if wars against non-democracies are included. Signalling The notion that democracies can signal intentions more credibly has been disputed. Criticism of definitions, methodology and data Some authors criticize the definition of democracy by arguing that states continually reinterpret other states' regime types as a consequence of their own objective interests and motives, such as economic and security concerns. For example, one study reports that Germany was considered a democratic state by Western opinion leaders at the end of the 19th century; yet in the years preceding World War I, when its relations with the United States, France and Britain started deteriorating, Germany was gradually reinterpreted as an autocratic state, in absence of any actual regime change. Shimmin moves a similar criticism regarding the western perception of Milosevic's Serbia between 1989 and 1999. Rummel replies to this criticism by stating that, in general, studies on democratic peace do not focus on other countries' perceptions of democracy; and in the specific case of Serbia, by arguing that the limited credit accorded by western democracies to Milosevic in the early 1990s did not amount to a recognition of democracy, but only to the perception that possible alternative leaders could be even worse. Some democratic peace researchers have been criticized for post hoc reclassifying some specific conflicts as non-wars or political systems as non-democracies without checking and correcting the whole data set used similarly. Supporters and opponents of the democratic peace agree that this is bad use of statistics, even if a plausible case can be made for the correction. A military affairs columnist of the newspaper Asia Times has summarized the above criticism in a journalist's fashion describing the theory as subject to the no true Scotsman problem: exceptions are explained away as not being between "real" democracies or "real" wars. Some democratic peace researchers require that the executive result from a substantively contested election. This may be a restrictive definition: For example, the National Archives of the United States notes that "For all intents and purposes, George Washington was unopposed for election as President, both in 1789 and 1792". (Under the original provisions for the Electoral College, there was no distinction between votes for president and Vice-president: each elector was required to vote for two distinct candidates, with the runner-up to be vice-president. Every elector cast one of his votes for Washington, John Adams received a majority of the other votes; there were several other candidates: so the election for vice president was contested.) Spiro made several other criticisms of the statistical methods used. Russett and a series of papers described by Ray responded to this, for example with different methodology. Sometimes the datasets used have also been criticized. For example, some authors have criticized the Correlates of War data for not including civilian deaths in the battle deaths count, especially in civil wars. Cohen and Weeks argue that most fishing disputes, which include no deaths and generally very limited threats of violence, should be excluded even from the list of military disputes. Gleditsch made several criticisms to the Correlates of War data set, and produced a revised set of data. Maoz and Russett made several criticisms to the Polity I and II data sets, which have mostly been addressed in later versions. The most comprehensive critique points out that "democracy" is rarely defined, never refers to substantive democracy, is unclear about causation, has been refuted in more than 100 studies, fails to account for some 200 deviant cases, and has been promoted ideologically to justify one country seeking to expand democracy abroad. Most studies treat the complex concept of "democracy" as a bivariate variable rather than attempting to dimensionalize the concept. Studies also fail to take into account the fact that there are dozens of types of democracy, so the results are meaningless unless articulated to a particular type of democracy or claimed to be true for all types, such as consociational or economic democracy, with disparate datasets. Microfoundations Recent work into the democratic norms explanations shows that the microfoundations on which this explanation rest do not find empirical support. Within most earlier studies, the presence of liberal norms in democratic societies and their subsequent influence on the willingness to wage war was merely assumed, never measured. Moreover, it was never investigated whether or not these norms are absent within other regime-types. Two recent studies measured the presence of liberal norms and investigated the assumed effect of these norms on the willingness to wage war. The results of both studies show that liberal democratic norms are not only present within liberal democracies, but also within other regime-types. Moreover, these norms are not of influence on the willingness to attack another state during an interstate conflict at the brink of war. Sebastian Rosato argues that democratic peace theory makes several false assumptions. Firstly, it assumes that democratic populaces will react negatively to the costs of war upon them. However, in modern wars casualties tend to be fairly low and soldiers are largely volunteers, meaning they accept the risks of fighting, so their families and friends, whom the cost of their death falls on heaviest, are less likely to criticise the government than the families and friends of conscripted soldiers. Secondly, democratic peace theory ignores the role of nationalism; democratic populaces are just as likely to be influenced by nationalist sentiment as anyone else and if a democratic populace believes that a war is necessary for their nation, the populace will support it. Lastly, democratic leaders are as likely to guide public opinion as they are to follow it. Democratic leaders are often aware of the power of nationalist sentiment and thus seek to encourage it when it comes to war, arguing that war is necessary to defend or spread the nation's way of life. Democratic leaders may even have an advatange over authoritarians in this regard, as they can be seen as more legitimately representative. Rosato argues that this does not just apply to wars of defence but also aggression; democratic populaces can be roused by nationalist feelings to support aggressive wars if they are seen as in the national interest. Rosato also argues that authoritarian leaders have a reduced incentive to go to war because civilian control over the military is less guaranteed in autocracies; there is always the risk the military could subvert civilian leadership and a war which results in defeat could swiftly result in a coup. Even military dictators run the risk of internal dissent within the armed forces. Autocratic leaders in general also risk unleashing political and social turmoil that could destroy them if they go to war. Conversely, bellicose democratic leaders can rely on the acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the democratic process, as pacifist actors in democracies will need to respect the legitimacy of a democratically elected government. If pro-war groups can capture the organs of the state in a democracy legitimately, then anti-war groups will have little means of opposing them outside of extra-constitutional means, which would likely backfire and cause the anti-war groups to lose legitimacy. A 2017 study found that public opinion in China showed the same reluctance in going to war as publics in democratic states, which suggests that publics in democratic states are not generally more opposed to war than publics in authoritarian states. Limited consequences The peacefulness may have various limitations and qualifiers and may not actually mean very much in the real world. Democratic peace researchers do in general not count as wars conflicts which do not kill a thousand on the battlefield; thus they exclude for example the bloodless Cod Wars. However, research has also found a peacefulness between democracies when looking at lesser conflicts. Liberal democracies have less of these wars than other states after 1945. This might be related to changes in the perception of non-European peoples, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Related to this is the human rights violations committed against native people, sometimes by liberal democracies. One response is that many of the worst crimes were committed by non-democracies, like in the European colonies before the nineteenth century, in King Leopold II of Belgium's privately owned Congo Free State, and in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The United Kingdom abolished slavery in British territory in 1833, immediately after the Reform Act 1832 had significantly enlarged the franchise. (Of course, the abolition of the slave trade had been enacted in 1807; and many DPT supporters would deny that the UK was a liberal democracy in 1833 when examining interstate wars.) Hermann and Kegley Jr. argue that interventions between democracies are more likely to happen than projected by an expected model. They further argue that democracies are more likely to intervene in other liberal states than against countries that are non-democracies. Finally, they argue that these interventions between democracies have been increasing over time and that the world can expect more of these interventions in the future. The methodology used has been criticized and more recent studies have found opposing results. Rummel argues that the continuing increase in democracy worldwide will soon lead to an end to wars and democide, possibly around or even before the middle of this century. The fall of Communism and the increase in the number of democratic states were accompanied by a sudden and dramatic decline in total warfare, interstate wars, ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, and the number of refugees and displaced persons. One report claims that the two main causes of this decline in warfare are the end of the Cold War itself and decolonization; but also claims that the three Kantian factors have contributed materially. Historical periods Economic historians Joel Mokyr and Hans-Joachim Voth argue that democratic states may have been more vulnerable to conquest because the rulers in those states were too heavily constrained. Absolutist rulers in other states could, however, operate more freely. Covert operations and proxy wars Critics of the democratic peace theory have pointed to covert operations and military interventions between democracies, and argued that these interventions indicate that democracies do not necessarily trust and respect each other. Alexander B. Downes and Lary Lauren Lilley argue that covert operations conducted by democratic states has different implications depending on which version of democratic peace theory one adheres to. They argue that covert operations are inconsistent with variants of democratic peace theory that emphasize norms and checks-and-balances, but that covert operations may be more consistent with versions of democratic peace theory that rely on selectorate theory's notion of large versus small winning coalitions. A 2015 study by Michael Poznansky reconciles findings that democracies engage in covert interventions against one another by arguing that democracies do so when they expect another state's democratic character to break down or decay. A 2022 study found that democracies rarely wage proxy wars against fellow democracies: "strong democratic institutions prevent elected leaders from engaging in proxy war against sister regimes, and embargo violations tend to occur when democratic institutions are weak." Information manipulation Chaim Kaufmann argues that the lead-up to the Iraq War demonstrates that constraints on war in democracies may hinge on whether democratic governments can control and manipulate information, and suppress intelligence findings that run counter to administration rhetoric, as well as whether there is a strong opposition party and powerful media. Coup by provoking a war Many democracies become non-democratic by war, as being aggressed or as aggressor (quickly after a coup), sometimes the coup leader worked to provoke that war. Carl Schmitt wrote on how to overrule a Constitution: "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." Schmitt, again on the need for internal (and foreign) enemies because they are useful to persuade the people not to trust anyone more than the Leader: "As long as the state is a political entity this requirement for internal peace compels it in critical situations to decide also upon the domestic enemy. Every state provides, therefore, some kind of formula for the declaration of an internal enemy." Whatever opposition will be pictured and intended as the actual foreign enemy's puppet. Other explanations Economic factors The capitalist peace, or capitalist peace theory, posits that according to given criteria for economic development (capitalism), developed economies have not engaged in war with each other, and rarely enter into low-level disputes. These theories have been proposed as an explanation for democratic peace by accounting for both democracy and the peace among democratic nations. The exact nature of the causality depends upon both the proposed variable and the measure of the indicator for the concept used. A majority of researchers on the determinants of democracy agree that economic development is a primary factor which allows the formation of a stable and healthy democracy. Thus, some researchers have argued that economic development also plays a factor in the establishment of peace. Mousseau argues that a culture of contracting in advanced market-oriented economies may cause both democracy and peace. These studies indicate that democracy, alone, is an unlikely cause of the democratic peace. A low level of market-oriented economic development may hinder development of liberal institutions and values. Hegre and Souva confirmed these expectations. Mousseau finds that democracy is a significant factor only when both democracies have levels of economic development well above the global median. In fact, the poorest 21% of the democracies studied, and the poorest 4–5% of current democracies, are significantly likely than other kinds of countries to fight each other. Mousseau, Hegre, and Oneal confirm that if at least one of the democracies involved has a very low level of economic development, democracy is ineffective in preventing war; however, they find that when also controlling for trade, 91% of all the democratic pairs had high enough development for the pacifying effect of democracy to be important during the 1885–1992 period and all in 1992. The difference in results of these two studies may be due to sampling: Mousseau's 2005 study observed only neighboring states where poor countries actually can fight each other. In fact, fully 89% of militarized conflicts between less developed countries from 1920 and 2000 were among directly contiguous neighbors. He argues that it is not likely that the results can be explained by trade: Because developed states have large economies, they do not have high levels of trade interdependence. In fact, the correlation of developed democracy with trade interdependence is a scant 0.06 (Pearson's r – considered substantively no correlation by statisticians.) Both World Wars were fought between countries which can be considered economically developed. Mousseau argues that both Germany and Japan – like the USSR during the Cold War and Saudi Arabia today – had state-managed economies and thus lacked his market norms. Hegre finds that democracy is correlated with civil peace only for developed countries, and for countries with high levels of literacy. Conversely, the risk of civil war decreases with development only for democratic countries. Gartzke argues that economic freedom (a quite different concept from Mousseau's market norms) or financial dependence explains the developed democratic peace, and these countries may be weak on these dimensions too. Rummel criticizes Gartzke's methodology and argues that his results are invalid. Allan Dafoe, John R. Oneal, and Bruce Russett have challenged Gartzke and Mousseau's research. Several studies find that democracy, more trade causing greater economic interdependence, and membership in more intergovernmental organizations reduce the risk of war. This is often called the Kantian peace theory since it is similar to Kant's earlier theory about a perpetual peace; it is often also called "liberal peace" theory, especially when one focuses on the effects of trade and democracy. (The theory that free trade can cause peace is quite old and referred to as Cobdenism.) Many researchers agree that these variables positively affect each other but each has a separate pacifying effect. For example, in countries exchanging a substantial amount of trade, economic interest groups may exist that oppose a reciprocal disruptive war, but in democracy such groups may have more power, and the political leaders be more likely to accept their requests. Weede argues that the pacifying effect of free trade and economic interdependence may be more important than that of democracy, because the former affects peace both directly and indirectly, by producing economic development and ultimately, democracy. Weede also lists some other authors supporting this view. However, some recent studies find no effect from trade but only from democracy. None of the authors listed argues that free trade alone causes peace. Even so, the issue of whether free trade or democracy is more important in maintaining peace may have potentially significant practical consequences, for example on evaluating the effectiveness of applying economic sanctions and restrictions to autocratic countries. It was Michael Doyle who reintroduced Kant's three articles into democratic peace theory. He argued that a pacific union of liberal states has been growing for the past two centuries. He denies that a pair of states will be peaceful simply because they are both liberal democracies; if that were enough, liberal states would not be aggressive towards weak non-liberal states (as the history of American relations with Mexico shows they are). Rather, liberal democracy is a necessary condition for international organization and hospitality (which are Kant's other two articles)—and all three are sufficient to produce peace. Other Kantians have not repeated Doyle's argument that all three in the triad must be present, instead stating that all three reduce the risk of war. Immanuel Wallerstein has argued that it is the global capitalist system that creates shared interests among the dominant parties, thus inhibiting potentially harmful belligerence. Toni Negri and Michael Hardt take a similar stance, arguing that the intertwined network of interests in the global capitalism leads to the decline of individual nation states, and the rise of a global Empire which has no outside, and no external enemies. As a result, they write, "The era of imperialist, interimperialist, and anti-imperialist wars is over. (...) we have entered the era of minor and internal conflicts. Every imperial war is a civil war, a police action". Other explanations Many studies supporting the theory have controlled for many possible alternative causes of the peace. Examples of factors controlled for are geographic distance, geographic contiguity, power status, alliance ties, militarization, economic wealth and economic growth, power ratio, and political stability. These studies have often found very different results depending on methodology and included variables, which has caused criticism. DPT does not state democracy is the only thing affecting the risk of military conflict. Many of the mentioned studies have found that other factors are also important. Several studies have also controlled for the possibility of reverse causality from peace to democracy. For example, one study supports the theory of simultaneous causation, finding that dyads involved in wars are likely to experience a decrease in joint democracy, which in turn increases the probability of further war. So they argue that disputes between democratizing or democratic states should be resolved externally at a very early stage, in order to stabilize the system. Another study finds that peace does not spread democracy, but spreading democracy is likely to spread peace. A different kind of reverse causation lies in the suggestion that impending war could destroy or decrease democracy, because the preparation for war might include political restrictions, which may be the cause for the findings of democratic peace. However, this hypothesis has been statistically tested in a study whose authors find, depending on the definition of the pre-war period, no such effect or a very slight one. So, they find this explanation unlikely. This explanation would predict a monadic effect, although weaker than the dyadic one. Weart argues that the peacefulness appears and disappears rapidly when democracy appears and disappears. This in his view makes it unlikely that variables that change more slowly are the explanation. Weart, however, has been criticized for not offering any quantitative analysis supporting his claims. Wars tend very strongly to be between neighboring states. Gleditsch showed that the average distance between democracies is about 8000 miles, the same as the average distance between all states. He believes that the effect of distance in preventing war, modified by the democratic peace, explains the incidence of war as fully as it can be explained. A 2020 study in International Organization found that it was not democracy per se that reduces the prospects for conflict, but whether women's suffrage was ensured. The study argued, "women's more pacific preferences generate a dyadic democratic peace (i.e., between democracies), as well as a monadic peace." According to Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization, there are several related and independent factors that contribute to democratic societies being more peaceful than other forms of governments: Wealth and comfort: Increased prosperity in democratic societies has been associated with peace because civilians are less willing to endure hardship of war and military service due to a more luxurious life at home than in pre-modern times. Increased wealth has worked to decrease war through comfort. Metropolitan service society: The majority of army recruits come from the countryside or factory workers. Many believe that these types of people are suited for war. But as technology progressed the army turned more towards advanced services in information that rely more on computerized data which urbanized people are recruited more for this service. Sexual revolution: The availability of sex due to the pill and women joining the labor market could be another factor that has led to less enthusiasm for men to go to war. Young men are more reluctant leave behind the pleasures of life for the rigors and chastity of the army. Fewer young males: There is greater life expectancy which leads to fewer young males. Young males are the most aggressive and the ones that join the army the most. With fewer younger males in developed societies could help explain more pacificity. Fewer children per family (lower fertility rate): During pre modern times it was always hard for families to lose a child but in modern times it has become more difficult due to more families having only one or two children. It has become even harder for parents to risk the loss of a child in war. However, Gat recognizes that this argument is a difficult one because during pre modern times the life expectancy was not high for children and bigger families were necessary. Women's franchise: Women are less overtly aggressive than men. Therefore, women are less inclined to serious violence and do not support it as much as men do. In liberal democracies women have been able to influence the government by getting elected. Electing more women could have an effect on whether liberal democracies take a more aggressive approach on certain issues. Nuclear weapons: Nuclear weapons could be the reason for not having a great power war. Many believe that a nuclear war would result in mutually assured destruction (MAD) which means that both countries involved in a nuclear war have the ability to strike the other until both sides are wiped out. This results in countries not wanting to strike the other for fear of being wiped out. Realist explanations Supporters of realism in international relations in general argue that not democracy or its absence, but considerations and evaluations of power, cause peace or war. Specifically, many realist critics claim that the effect ascribed to democratic, or liberal, peace, is in fact due to alliance ties between democratic states which in turn are caused, one way or another, by realist factors. For example, Farber and Gowa find evidence for peace between democracies to be statistically significant only in the period from 1945 on, and consider such peace an artifact of the Cold War, when the threat from the communist states forced democracies to ally with one another. Mearsheimer offers a similar analysis of the Anglo-American peace before 1945, caused by the German threat. Spiro finds several instances of wars between democracies, arguing that evidence in favor of the theory might be not so vast as other authors report, and claims that the remaining evidence consists of peace between allied states with shared objectives. He acknowledges that democratic states might have a somewhat greater tendency to ally with one another, and regards this as the only real effect of democratic peace. Rosato argues that most of the significant evidence for democratic peace has been observed after World War II; and that it has happened within a broad alliance, which can be identified with NATO and its satellite nations, imposed and maintained by American dominance as part of Pax Americana. One of the main points in Rosato's argument is that, although never engaged in open war with another liberal democracy during the Cold War, the United States intervened openly or covertly in the political affairs of democratic states several times, for example in the Chilean coup of 1973, the Operation Ajax (1953 coup in Iran) and Operation PBSuccess (1954 coup in Guatemala); in Rosato's view, these interventions show the United States' determination to maintain an "imperial peace". The most direct counter arguments to such criticisms have been studies finding peace between democracies to be significant even when controlling for "common interests" as reflected in alliance ties. Regarding specific issues, Ray objects that explanations based on the Cold War should predict that the Communist bloc would be at peace within itself also, but exceptions include the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, and the Sino-Vietnamese War. Ray also argues that the external threat did not prevent conflicts in the Western bloc when at least one of the involved states was a non-democracy, such as the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus (against Greek Junta supported Cypriot Greeks), the Falklands War, and the Football War. Also, one study notes that the explanation "goes increasingly stale as the post-Cold War world accumulates an increasing number of peaceful dyad-years between democracies". Rosato's argument about American dominance has also been criticized for not giving supporting statistical evidence. Some realist authors also criticize in detail the explanations first by supporters of democratic peace, pointing to supposed inconsistencies or weaknesses. Rosato criticizes most explanations to how democracy might cause peace. Arguments based on normative constraints, he argues, are not consistent with the fact that democracies do go to war no less than other states, thus violating norms preventing war; for the same reason he refutes arguments based on the importance of public opinion. Regarding explanations based on greater accountability of leaders, he finds that historically autocratic leaders have been removed or punished more often than democratic leaders when they get involved in costly wars. Finally, he also criticizes the arguments that democracies treat each other with trust and respect even during crises; and that democracy might be slow to mobilize its composite and diverse groups and opinions, hindering the start of a war, drawing support from other authors. Another realist, Layne, analyzes the crises and brinkmanship that took place between non-allied democratic great powers, during the relatively brief period when such existed. He finds no evidence either of institutional or cultural constraints against war; indeed, there was popular sentiment in favor of war on both sides. Instead, in all cases, one side concluded that it could not afford to risk that war at that time, and made the necessary concessions. Rosato's objections have been criticized for claimed logical and methodological errors, and for being contradicted by existing statistical research. Russett replies to Layne by re-examining some of the crises studied in his article, and reaching different conclusions; Russett argues that perceptions of democracy prevented escalation, or played a major role in doing so. Also, a recent study finds that, while in general the outcome of international disputes is highly influenced by the contenders' relative military strength, this is not true if both contenders are democratic states; in this case the authors find the outcome of the crisis to be independent of the military capabilities of contenders, which is contrary to realist expectations. Finally, both the realist criticisms here described ignore new possible explanations, like the game-theoretic one discussed below. Nuclear deterrent A different kind of realist criticism stresses the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining peace. In realist terms, this means that, in the case of disputes between nuclear powers, respective evaluation of power might be irrelevant because of Mutual assured destruction preventing both sides from foreseeing what could be reasonably called a "victory". The 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan has been cited as a counterexample to this argument, though this was a small, regional conflict and the threat of WMDs being used contributed to its de-escalation. Some supporters of the democratic peace do not deny that realist factors are also important. Research supporting the theory has also shown that factors such as alliance ties and major power status influence interstate conflict behavior. Statistical difficulties due to newness of democracy One problem with the research on wars is that, as the Realist John Mearsheimer put it, "democracies have been few in number over the past two centuries, and thus there have been few opportunities where democracies were in a position to fight one another". Democracies have been very rare until recently. Even looser definitions of democracy, such as Doyle's, find only a dozen democracies before the late nineteenth century, and many of them short-lived or with limited franchise. Freedom House finds no independent state with universal suffrage in 1900. Wayman, a supporter of the theory, states that "If we rely solely on whether there has been an inter-democratic war, it is going to take many more decades of peace to build our confidence in the stability of the democratic peace". Studying lesser conflicts Many researchers have reacted to this limitation by studying lesser conflicts instead, since they have been far more common. There have been many more MIDs than wars; the Correlates of War Project counts several thousand during the last two centuries. A review lists many studies that have reported that democratic pairs of states are less likely to be involved in MIDs than other pairs of states. Another study finds that after both states have become democratic, there is a decreasing probability for MIDs within a year and this decreases almost to zero within five years. When examining the inter-liberal MIDs in more detail, one study finds that they are less likely to involve third parties, and that the target of the hostility is less likely to reciprocate, if the target reciprocates the response is usually proportional to the provocation, and the disputes are less likely to cause any loss of life. The most common action was "Seizure of Material or Personnel". Studies find that the probability that disputes between states will be resolved peacefully is positively affected by the degree of democracy exhibited by the lesser democratic state involved in that dispute. Disputes between democratic states are significantly shorter than disputes involving at least one undemocratic state. Democratic states are more likely to be amenable to third party mediation when they are involved in disputes with each other. In international crises that include the threat or use of military force, one study finds that if the parties are democracies, then relative military strength has no effect on who wins. This is different from when non-democracies are involved. These results are the same also if the conflicting parties are formal allies. Similarly, a study of the behavior of states that joined ongoing militarized disputes reports that power is important only to autocracies: democracies do not seem to base their alignment on the power of the sides in the dispute. Academic relevance and derived studies Democratic peace theory is a well established research field with more than a hundred authors having published articles about it. Several peer-reviewed studies mention in their introduction that most researchers accept the theory as an empirical fact. According to a 2021 study by Kosuke Imai and James Lo, "overturning the negative association between democracy and conflict would require a confounder that is forty-seven times more prevalent in democratic dyads than in other dyads. To put this number in context, the relationship between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that between smoking and lung cancer. To explain away the democratic peace, therefore, scholars would have to find far more powerful confounders than those already identified in the literature." Imre Lakatos suggested that what he called a "progressive research program" is better than a "degenerative" one when it can explain the same phenomena as the "degenerative" one, but is also characterized by growth of its research field and the discovery of important novel facts. In contrast, the supporters of the "degenerative" program do not make important new empirical discoveries, but instead mostly apply adjustments to their theory in order to defend it from competitors. Some researchers argue that democratic peace theory is now the "progressive" program in international relations. According to these authors, the theory can explain the empirical phenomena previously explained by the earlier dominant research program, realism in international relations; in addition, the initial statement that democracies do not, or rarely, wage war on one another, has been followed by a rapidly growing literature on novel empirical regularities. Other examples are several studies finding that democracies are more likely to ally with one another than with other states, forming alliances which are likely to last longer than alliances involving non-democracies; several studies showing that democracies conduct diplomacy differently and in a more conciliatory way compared to non-democracies; one study finding that democracies with proportional representation are in general more peaceful regardless of the nature of the other party involved in a relationship; and another study reporting that proportional representation system and decentralized territorial autonomy is positively associated with lasting peace in postconflict societies. Influence The democratic peace theory has been extremely divisive among political scientists. It is rooted in the idealist and classical liberalist traditions and is opposed to the dominant theory of realism. In the United States, presidents from both major parties have expressed support for the theory. In his 1994 State of the Union address, then-President Bill Clinton, a member of the Democratic Party, said: "Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other". In a 2004 press conference, then-President George W. Bush, a member of the Republican Party, said: "And the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.... I've got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that's why I'm such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy." In a 1999 speech, Chris Patten, the then-European Commissioner for External Relations, said: "Inevitable because the EU was formed partly to protect liberal values, so it is hardly surprising that we should think it appropriate to speak out. But it is also sensible for strategic reasons. Free societies tend not to fight one another or to be bad neighbours". The A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security Strategy states: "The best protection for our security is a world of well-governed democratic states." Tony Blair has also claimed the theory is correct. As justification for initiating war Some fear that the democratic peace theory may be used to justify wars against non-democracies in order to bring lasting peace, in a democratic crusade. Woodrow Wilson in 1917 asked Congress to declare war against Imperial Germany, citing Germany's sinking of American ships due to unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann telegram, but also stating that "A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations" and "The world must be made safe for democracy." R. J. Rummel was a notable proponent of war for the purpose of spreading democracy, based on this theory. Some point out that the democratic peace theory has been used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, others argue that this justification was used only after the war had already started. Furthermore, Weede has argued that the justification is extremely weak, because forcibly democratizing a country completely surrounded by non-democracies, most of which are full autocracies, as Iraq was, is at least as likely to increase the risk of war as it is to decrease it (some studies show that dyads formed by one democracy and one autocracy are the most warlike, and several find that the risk of war is greatly increased in democratizing countries surrounded by non-democracies). According to Weede, if the United States and its allies wanted to adopt a rationale strategy of forced democratization based on democratic peace, which he still does not recommend, it would be best to start intervening in countries which border with at least one or two stable democracies, and expand gradually. Also, research shows that attempts to create democracies by using external force has often failed. Gleditsch, Christiansen, and Hegre argue that forced democratization by interventionism may initially have partial success, but often create an unstable democratizing country, which can have dangerous consequences in the long run. Those attempts which had a permanent and stable success, like democratization in Austria, West Germany and Japan after World War II, mostly involved countries which had an advanced economic and social structure already, and implied a drastic change of the whole political culture. Supporting internal democratic movements and using diplomacy may be far more successful and less costly. Thus, the theory and related research, if they were correctly understood, may actually be an argument against a democratic crusade. Michael Haas has written perhaps the most trenchant critique of a hidden normative agenda. Among the points raised: Due to sampling manipulation, the research creates the impression that democracies can justifiably fight non-democracies, snuff out budding democracies, or even impose democracy. And due to sloppy definitions, there is no concern that democracies continue undemocratic practices yet remain in the sample as if pristine democracies. This criticism is confirmed by David Keen who finds that almost all historical attempts to impose democracy by violent means have failed. Related theories Republican liberalism Republican liberalism is a variation of Democratic Peace Theory which claims that liberal and republican democracies will rarely go to war with each other. It argues that these governments are more peaceful than non-democracies and will avoid conflict when possible. According to Micheal Doyle, there are three main reasons for this: Democracies tend to have similar domestic political cultures, they share common morals, and their economic systems are interdependent. Liberal democracies (republics) that trade with each other, are economically dependent on one another and therefore, will always attempt to maintain diplomatic relations as to not disrupt their economies. Liberalism, as an overarching theory, holds that diplomacy and cooperation is the most effective way to avoid war and maintain peace. This is contrasting to the theory of realism, which states that conflict will always be recurrent in the international system, whether due to human nature or the anarchic international system. The concept of Republican liberalism is thought to have initially originated from Immanuel Kant's book "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (1795). The term "Perpetual Peace" refers to the permanent establishment of peace, and was made notorious by the book. Democratic peace, commercial peace and institutional peace were all advanced in the book as well. It takes a rather utopian view, that humanities' desire for peace will out compete humanities' desire for war. Kantian Liberalism Kant and the liberal school of thought view international co-operation as a more rational option for states than resorting to war. However, the neo-liberal approach concedes to the realist school of thought, that when states cooperate it is simply because it is in their best interest. Kant insisted that a world with only peace was possible, and he offered three definitive articles that would create the pathway for it. Each went on to become a dominant strain of post–World War II liberal international relations theory. I "The Civil Constitution of Every State should be Republican" II "The Law of Nations shall be founded on a Federation of Free States" III "The Law of World Citizenship shall be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality" I: "The Civil Constitution of Every State should be Republican" Kant believed that every state should have Republican style form of government. As in, a state where "supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives." Kant saw this in Ancient Rome, where they began to move away from Athenian democracy (direct democracy) and towards a representative democracy. Kant believed giving the citizens the right to vote and decide for themselves would lead to shorter wars and less wars. He also thought it was important to "check the power of monarchs", to establish a system of checks and balances where no one person holds absolute power. Peace is always dependent on the internal character of governments. Republics, with a legislative body that will be able to hold the executive leader in check and maintain the peace. II: "The Law of Nations shall be founded on a Federation of Free States" Kant argues nations, like individuals can be tempted to harm each other at any given moment. So, rule of law should be established internationally. Without international laws and courts of judgement, then force would be the only way to settle disputes. States ought to instead develop international organisations and rules that facilitate cooperation. In any case, some kind of federation is necessary in order to maintain peace between nations. Contemporary examples include the United Nations and the European Union, which try to maintain peace and encourage cooperation among nations. III: "The Law of World Citizenship shall be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality" Kant is referring to "the right of the stranger to not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another.". So long "stranger" is peaceful, he should not be treated with hostility. However, this is not the right to be a "permanent visitor", simply as a temporary stay. This is applicable in the contemporary world when a country is receiving a world leader. The host country usually holds a state welcoming ceremony which strengthens diplomatic relations. European peace There is significant debate over whether the lack of any major European general wars since 1945 is due to cooperation and integration of liberal-democratic European states themselves (as in the European Union or Franco-German cooperation), an enforced peace due to the intervention of the Soviet Union and the United States until 1989 and the United States alone thereafter, or a combination of both. The debate over this theory was thrust in the public eye when the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union for its role in creating peace in Europe. Notable major wars in Europe after 1945 are Yugoslav Wars and Russian invasion of Ukraine, which follows the prediction of the interactive model of democratic peace. See also Global Peace Index Peace and conflict studies Notes and references Notes References Bibliography . Further reading Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. Debating the Democratic Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. . Davenport, Christian. 2007. "State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace." New York: Cambridge University Press. Hegre H. 2014. "Democracy and armed conflict." Journal of Peace Research. 51(2): 159–172. Hook, Steven W., ed. Democratic Peace in Theory and Practice (Kent State University Press; 2010) Huth, Paul K., et al. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press: 2003. . Ish-Shalom, Piki. (2013) Democratic Peace: A Political Biography (University of Michigan Press; 2013) Jahn, B. (2005). "Kant, Mill, and Illiberal Legacies in International Affairs." International Organization, 59(1), 177–207. Lipson, Charles. Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace. Princeton University Press: 2003. . External links Political science theories International relations theory Political theories Peace Democracy

Social liberalism

Social liberalism is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses social justice, social services, a mixed economy, and the expansion of civil and political rights, as opposed to classical liberalism which favors limited government and an overall more laissez-faire style of governance. While both are committed to personal freedoms, social liberalism places greater emphasis on the role of government in addressing social inequalities and ensuring public welfare. Economically, social liberalism is based on the social market economy and views the common good as harmonious with the individual's freedom. Social liberals overlap with social democrats in accepting market intervention more than other liberals; its importance is considered auxiliary compared to social democrats. Ideologies that emphasize its economic policy include welfare liberalism, New Deal liberalism and New Democrats in the United States, and Keynesian liberalism. Cultural liberalism is an ideology that highlights its cultural aspects. The world has widely adopted social liberal policies. Social liberal ideas and parties tend to be considered centre to centre-left, although there are deviations from these positions to both the political left or right. Addressing economic and social issues, such as poverty, welfare, infrastructure, health care and education using government intervention, while emphasising individual rights and autonomy, are expectations under a social liberal government. In modern political discourse, social liberalism is associated with progressivism, a left-liberalism contrasted to the right-leaning neoliberalism, and combines support for a mixed economy with cultural liberalism. Social liberalism may also refer to American progressive stances on sociocultural issues, such as reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, in contrast with American social conservatism. Cultural liberalism is often referred to as social liberalism because it expresses the social dimension of liberalism; however, it is not the same as the broader political ideology known as social liberalism. In American politics, a social liberal may hold either conservative (economic liberal) or liberal (economic progressive) views on fiscal policy. Origins United Kingdom By the end of the 19th century, downturns in economic growth challenged the principles of classical liberalism, a growing awareness of poverty and unemployment present within modern industrial cities, and the agitation of organised labour. A significant political reaction against the changes introduced by industrialisation and laissez-faire capitalism came from one-nation conservatives concerned about social balance and the introduction of the famous Education Act 1870. However, socialism later became a more important force for change and reform. Some Victorian writers—including Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold—became early influential critics of social injustice. John Stuart Mill contributed enormously to liberal thought by combining elements of classical liberalism with what eventually became known as the new liberalism. Mill developed this philosophy by liberalising the concept of consequentialism to promote a rights based system. He also developed his liberal dogma by combining the idea of using a utilitarian foundation to base upon the idea of individual rights. The new liberals tried to adapt the old language of liberalism to confront these difficult circumstances, which they believed could only be resolved through a broader and more interventionist conception of the state. Ensuring that individuals did not physically interfere with each other or merely by impartially having formulated and applied laws could not establish an equal right to liberty. More positive and proactive measures were required to ensure that every individual would have an equal opportunity for success. New Liberals In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a group of British thinkers known as the New Liberals made a case against laissez-faire classical liberalism. It argued in favour of state intervention in social, economic and cultural life. What they proposed is now called social liberalism. The New Liberals, including intellectuals Thomas Hill Green, Leonard Hobhouse and John A. Hobson, saw individual liberty achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed through collective action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented and interventionist state could alleviate these conditions. The Liberal governments of Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith, mainly thanks to Chancellor of the Exchequer and later Prime Minister David Lloyd George, established the foundations of the welfare state in the United Kingdom before World War I. The comprehensive welfare state built in the United Kingdom after World War II, although primarily accomplished by the Labour Party's Attlee ministry, was significantly designed by two Liberals, namely John Maynard Keynes (who laid the foundations in economics with the Keynesian Revolution) and William Beveridge (whose Beveridge Report was used to design the welfare system). Historian Peter Weiler has argued: Although still partially informed by older Liberal concerns for character, self-reliance, and the capitalist market, this legislation nevertheless marked a significant shift in Liberal approaches to the state and social reform, approaches that later governments would slowly expand and that would grow into the welfare state after the Second World War. What was new in these reforms was the underlying assumption that the state could be a positive force, that the measure of individual freedom ... was not how much the state left people alone, but whether he gave them the capacity to fill themselves as individuals.Weiler, Peter (2016). The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914 (2016). Excerpt . Germany In 1860s Germany, left-liberal politicians like Max Hirsch, Franz Duncker, and Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch established trade unions—modelled on their British counterparts—to help workers improve working and economic conditions through reconciliation of interests and cooperation with their employers rather than class struggle. Schulze-Delitzsch is also the founding father of the German cooperative movement and the organiser of the world's first credit unions. Some liberal economists, such as Lujo Brentano or Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz, established the (German Economic Association) in 1873 to promote social reform based on the historical school of economics and therefore rejecting classical economics, proposing a third way between Manchester Liberalism and socialist revolution in the 1871-founded German Empire. However, the German left-liberal movement fragmented into wings and new parties over the 19th century. The main objectives of the left-liberal parties—the German Progress Party and its successors—were free speech, freedom of assembly, representative government, secret and equal but obligation-tied suffrage, and protection of private property. At the same time, they were strongly opposed to creating a welfare state, which they called state socialism. The main differences between the left-liberal parties were: The national ambitions. The different substate people's goals. Free trade against Schutzzollpolitik. The building of the national economy. The term social liberalism was used first in 1891 by Austria-Hungarian economist and journalist Theodor Hertzka. Subsequently, in 1893, the historian and social reformer Ignaz Jastrow also used this term and joined the German Economic Association. He published the socialist democratic manifesto "Social-liberal: Tasks for Liberalism in Prussia" to create an "action group" for the general people's welfare in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which they rejected. The National-Social Association, founded by the Protestant pastor Friedrich Naumann also maintained contacts with the left liberals. He tried to draw workers away from Marxism by proposing a mix of nationalism and Protestant-Christian-value-inflected social liberalism to overcome class antagonisms by non-revolutionary means. Naumann called this a "proletarian-bourgeois integral liberalism". Although the party could not win any seats and soon dissolved, he remained influential in theoretical German left-liberalism. In the Weimar Republic, the German Democratic Party was founded and came into an inheritance of the left-liberal past and had a leftist social wing and a rightist economic wing but heavily favoured the democratic constitution over a monarchist one. Its ideas of a socially balanced economy with solidarity, duty, and rights among all workers struggled due to the economic sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles, but it influenced local cooperative enterprises. After 1945, the Free Democrats included most of the social liberals while others joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Until the 1960s, post-war ordoliberalism was the model for Germany. It had a theoretical social liberal influence based on duty and rights. As the Free Democrats discarded social liberal ideas in a more conservative and economically liberal approach in 1982, some members left the party and formed the social liberal Liberal Democrats. France In France, solidaristic thinkers, including Alfred Fouillée and Émile Durkheim, developed the social-liberal theory in the Third Republic. Sociology inspired them, and they influenced radical politicians like Léon Bourgeois. They explained that a more extensive division of labour caused more opportunity and individualism and inspired more complex interdependence. They argued that the individual had a debt to society, promoting progressive taxation to support public works and welfare schemes. However, they wanted the state to coordinate rather than manage, encouraging cooperative insurance schemes among individuals. Their main objective was to remove barriers to social mobility rather than create a welfare state. United States Social liberalism was a term in the United States to differentiate it from classical liberalism or laissez-faire. It dominated political and economic thought for several years until the word branched off from it around the Great Depression and the New Deal. In the 1870s and the 1880s, the American economists Richard Ely, John Bates Clark, and Henry Carter Adams—influenced both by socialism and the Evangelical Protestant movement—castigated the conditions caused by industrial factories and expressed sympathy toward labour unions. However, none developed a systematic political philosophy, and they later abandoned their flirtations with socialist thinking. In 1883, Lester Frank Ward published the two-volume Dynamic Sociology. He formalized the basic tenets of social liberalism while at the same time attacking the laissez-faire policies advocated by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. The historian Henry Steele Commager ranked Ward alongside William James, John Dewey, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and called him the father of the modern welfare state. A writer from 1884 until the 1930s, John Dewey—an educator influenced by Hobhouse, Green, and Ward—advocated socialist methods to achieve liberal goals. John Dewey's expanding popularity as an economist also coincided with the greater Georgist movement that rose in the 1910s, pinnacling with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. America later incorporated some social liberal ideas into the New Deal, which developed as a response to the Great Depression when Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office. Implementation The welfare state grew gradually and unevenly from the late 19th century but fully developed following World War II, along with the mixed market economy and general welfare capitalism. Also called embedded liberalism, social liberal policies gained broad support across the political spectrum because they reduced society's disruptive and polarizing tendencies without challenging the capitalist economic system. Businesses accepted social liberalism in the face of widespread dissatisfaction with the boom and bust cycle of the earlier financial system as it seemed to them to be a lesser evil than more left-wing modes of government. Characteristics of social liberalism were cooperation between big business, government, and labour unions. Governments could assume a vital role because the wartime economy had strengthened their power, but the extent to which this occurred varied considerably among Western democracies. Social liberalism is also a generally internationalist ideology. Social liberalism has also historically been an advocate for liberal feminism among other forms social progress. Social liberals tend to find a compromise between the perceived extremes of unrestrained capitalism and state socialism to create an economy built on regulated capitalism. Due to a reliance on what they believe to be a too centralized government to achieve its goals, critics have called this strain of liberalism a more authoritarian ideological position compared to the original schools of liberal thought, especially in the United States, where conservatives have called presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson authoritarians. United Kingdom The first notable implementation of social liberal policies occurred under the Liberal Party in Britain from 1906 until 1914. These initiatives became known as the Liberal welfare reforms. The main elements included pensions for poor older adults, and health, sickness, and unemployment insurance. These changes were accompanied by progressive taxation, particularly in the People's Budget of 1909. The old system of charity relying on the Poor Laws and supplemented by private charity, public cooperatives, and private insurance companies was in crisis, giving the state added impetus for reform. The Liberal Party caucus elected in 1906 also contained more professionals, including academics and journalists, sympathetic to social liberalism. The large business owners had mostly deserted the Liberals for the Conservatives, the latter becoming the favourite party for commercial interests. Both business interests and trade unions regularly opposed the reforms. Liberals most identified with these reforms were Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, John Maynard Keynes, David Lloyd George (especially as Chancellor of the Exchequer), and Winston Churchill (as President of the Board of Trade), in addition to the civil servant (and later Liberal MP) William Beveridge. Most of the social democratic parties in Europe (notably the British Labour Party) have taken on strong influences of social liberal ideology. Despite Britain's two major parties coming from the traditions of socialism and conservatism, the most substantive political and economic debates of recent times were between social liberal and classical liberal concepts. Germany Alexander Rüstow, a German economist, first proposed the German variant of economically social liberalism. In 1932, he dubbed this kind of social liberalism neoliberalism while speaking at the Social Policy Association. However, that term now carries a meaning different from the one proposed by Rüstow. Rüstow wanted an alternative to socialism and the classical liberal economics developed in the German Empire. In 1938, Rüstow met with various economic thinkers—including Ludwig Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Wilhelm Röpke—to determine how and what could renew liberalism. Rüstow advocated a powerful state to enforce free markets and state intervention to correct market failures. However, Mises argued that monopolies and cartels operated because of state intervention and protectionism and claimed that the only legitimate role for the state was to abolish barriers to market entry. He viewed Rüstow's proposals as negating market freedom and saw them as similar to socialism. Following World War II, the West German government adopted Rüstow's neoliberalism, now usually called ordoliberalism or the social market economy, under Ludwig Erhard. He was the Minister of Economics and later became Chancellor. Erhard lifted price controls and introduced free markets. While Germany's post-war economic recovery was due to these policies, the welfare state—which Bismarck had established—became increasingly costly. Turkey The Kemalist economic model was designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1930s, founder of the Republic of Turkey, after an unsuccessful attempt to embrace a regulated market economy from İzmir Economic Congress until the 1929 Depression. He put the principle of "etatism" in his Six Arrows and stated that etatism was a unique economic system for Turkey and that it was different from socialism, communism, and collectivism. Atatürk explained his economic idea as follows: State can't take the place of individuals, but, it must take into consideration the individuals to make them improve and develop theirselves. Etatism includes the work that individuals won't do because they can't make profit or the work which are necessary for national interests. Just as it is the duty of the state to protect the freedom and independence of the country and to regulate internal affairs, the state must take care of the education and health of its citizens. The state must take care of the roads, railways, telegraphs, telephones, animals of the country, all kinds of vehicles and the general wealth of the nation to protect the peace and security of the country. During the administration and protection of the country, the things we just counted are more important than cannons, rifles and all kinds of weapons. (...) Private interests are generally the opposite of the general interests. Also, private interests are based on rivalries. But, you can't create a stable economy only with this. People who think like that are delusional and they will be a failure. (...) And, work of an individual must stay as the main basis of economic growth. Not preventing an individual's work and not obstructing the individual's freedom and enterprise with the state's own activities is the main basis of the principle of democracy. Moreover, Atatürk said this in his opening speech on 1 November 1937: "Unless there is an absolute necessity, the markets can't be intervened; also, no markets can be completely free." Also it was said by İsmet İnönü that Atatürk's principle of etatism was Keynesian and a Turkish variant of New Deal. Rest of Europe The post-war governments of other countries in Western Europe also followed social liberal policies. These policies were implemented primarily by Christian democrats and social democrats as liberal parties in Europe declined in strength from their peak in the 19th century. United States American political discourse resisted this social turn in European liberalism. While the economic policies of the New Deal appeared Keynesian, there was no revision of liberal theory in favour of more significant state initiatives. Even though the United States lacked an effective socialist movement, New Deal policies often appeared radical and were attacked by the right. American liberalism would eventually evolve into a more anti-communist ideology as a result. American exceptionalism was likely the reason for the separate development of modern liberalism in the United States, which kept mainstream American ideology within a narrow range. John Rawls' principal work, A Theory of Justice (1971), can be considered a flagship exposition of social liberal thinking, noted for its use of analytic philosophy and advocating the combination of individual freedom and a fairer distribution of resources. According to Rawls, every individual should be allowed to choose and pursue their conception of what is desirable. At the same time, the greater society must maintain a socially just distribution of goods. Rawls argued that differences in material wealth are tolerable if general economic growth and wealth also benefit the poorest. A Theory of Justice countered utilitarian thinking in the tradition of Jeremy Bentham, instead following the Kantian concept of a social contract, picturing society as a mutual agreement between rational citizens, producing rights and duties as well as establishing and defining roles and tasks of the state. Rawls put the equal liberty principle in the first place, providing every person with equal access to the same set of fundamental liberties, followed by the fair equality of opportunity and difference, thus allowing social and economic inequalities under the precondition that privileged positions are accessible to everyone, that everyone has equal opportunities and that even the least advantaged members of society benefit from this framework. This framework repeated itself in the equation of Justice as Fairness. Rawls proposed these principles not just to adherents of liberalism but as a basis for all democratic politics, regardless of ideology. The work advanced social liberal ideas immensely within the 1970s political and philosophic academia. Rawls may therefore be a "patron saint" of social liberalism. Decline Following economic problems in the 1960s and 1970s, liberal thought underwent some transformation. Keynesian financial management faced criticism for interfering with the free market. At the same time, increased welfare spending funded by higher taxes prompted fears of lower investment, lower consumer spending, and the creation of a "dependency culture." Trade unions often caused high wages and industrial disruption, while total employment was considered unsustainable. Writers such as Milton Friedman and Samuel Brittan, whom Friedrich Hayek influenced, advocated a reversal of social liberalism. Their policies—often called neoliberalism—had a significant influence on Western politics, most notably on the governments of United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the United States President Ronald Reagan. They pursued policies of deregulation of the economy and reduction in spending on social services. Part of the reason for the collapse of the social liberal coalition was a challenge in the 1960s and 1970s from financial interests that could operate independently of national governments. A related reason was the comparison of ideas such as socialized medicine, advocated by politicians such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, facing criticisms and being dubbed as socialist by conservatives during the midst of the Red Scare, notably by the previously mentioned Reagan. Another cause was the decline of organized labour which had formed part of the coalition but was also a support for left-wing ideologies challenging the liberal consensus. Related to this were the downfall of working-class consciousness and the growth of the middle class. The push by the United States and the United Kingdom, which had been least accepting of social liberalism for trade liberalization, further eroded support. Contemporary revival of social liberal thought From the end of the 20th century, at the same time that it was losing political influence, social liberalism experienced an intellectual revival with several substantial authors, including John Rawls (political philosophy), Amartya Sen (philosophy and economy), Ronald Dworkin (philosophy of law), Martha Nussbaum (philosophy), Bruce Ackerman (constitutional law), and others. Parties and organisations In Europe, social liberal parties tend to be small or medium-sized centrist and centre-left parties. Examples of successful European social liberal parties participating in government coalitions at national or regional levels include the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, the Democrats 66 in the Netherlands, and the Danish Social Liberal Party. In continental European politics, social liberal parties are integrated into the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, the third biggest group in the parliament, and includes social liberal parties, market liberal parties, and centrist parties. Other groups such as the European People's Party, the Greens–European Free Alliance, and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats also house some political parties with social-liberal factions. In North America, social liberalism (as Europe would refer to it) tends to be the dominant form of liberalism present, so in common parlance, "liberal" refers to social liberals. In Canada, social liberalism is held by the Liberal Party of Canada, while in the United States, social liberalism is a significant force within the Democratic Party. Giving an exhaustive list of social liberal parties worldwide is difficult, mainly because political organisations are not always ideologically pure, and party ideologies often change over time. However, peers such as the Africa Liberal Network, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, the European Liberal Forum, the Liberal International, and the Liberal Network for Latin America or scholars usually accept them as parties who are following social liberalism as a core ideology. Social liberal parties or parties with social liberal factions Social liberal political parties that are more left-biased than general centre-left parties are not described here. (See list of progressive parties) Åland: Liberals for Åland Andorra: Action for Andorra Argentina: Radical Civic Union Australia: Liberal Party of Australia (factions), Australian Labor Party (factions) Bahamas: Progressive Liberal Party Belgium: DéFI, Party for Freedom and Progress, Vivant Bosnia and Herzegovina: Our Party Brazil : Cidadania, Brazilian Social Democracy Party Canada: Liberal Party of Canada Chile: Radical Party of Chile, Liberal Party of Chile Croatia: Croatian People's Party – Liberal Democrats, Centre, Civic Liberal Alliance, Istrian Democratic Assembly Czech Republic: Czech Pirate Party Denmark: Danish Social Liberal Party Egypt: Constitution Party Estonia: Estonian Centre Party, Estonian Greens, Estonia 200 European Union: Volt Europa Faroe Islands: Self-Government Party Finland: Centre Party, Green League, National Coalition Party, Swedish People's Party of Finland France: Renaissance, Radical Party of the Left, Territories of Progress, The New Democrats Germany: Alliance 90/The Greens, Liberal Democrats, Social Democratic Party of Germany (factions). Greenland: Democrats Hungary: Democratic Coalition Iceland: Bright Future India: Indian National Congress Indonesia: Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle Israel: Israel Resilience Party, Yesh Atid Italy: Democratic Party (factions), Italia Viva, Italian Republican Party, Action Japan: Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan Kosovo: Democratic Party of Kosovo Latvia: Development/For! Lesotho: Revolution for Prosperity Luxembourg: Democratic Party Malaysia: Democratic Action Party, People's Justice Party Montenegro: Positive Montenegro, United Reform Action Morocco: Citizens' Forces Myanmar: National League for Democracy, National Democratic Force Netherlands: Democrats 66 New Zealand: New Zealand Labour Party (factions) Norway: Liberal Party Philippines: Liberal Party Poland: Polish Initiative, Your Movement, Union of European Democrats Portugal: Together for the People, Liberal Initiative (faction) Romania: PRO Romania Russia: Yabloko Serbia: Democratic Party Slovakia: Progressive Slovakia Slovenia: List of Marjan Šarec, Party of Alenka Bratušek South Africa: Democratic Alliance South Korea: Democratic Party of Korea, Justice Party Sweden: Liberals (factions), Centre Party Taiwan: Democratic Progressive Party、Taiwan People's Party Trinidad and Tobago: People's National Movement Turkey: Good Party Democracy and Progress Party United Kingdom: Liberal Democrats, Liberal Party United States: Democratic Party Historical social liberal parties or parties with social liberal factions Andorra: Democratic Renewal Australia: Australian Democrats Belgium: Spirit France: Radical Movement Germany: Free-minded People's Party, German Democratic Party, German People's Party, Progressive People's Party Greece: The River Hungary: Alliance of Free Democrats Iceland: Liberal Party, Union of Liberals and Leftists Israel: Independent Liberals, Kulanu, Progressive Party Italy: Action Party, Radical Party, Italian Liberal Party, Democratic Alliance, Democratic Union, The Democrats Japan: Japan Socialist Party (factions), Democratic Party of Japan Latvia: Society for Political Change Lithuania: New Union (Social Liberals) Luxembourg: Radical Socialist Party Malta: Democratic Party Moldova: Our Moldova Alliance Netherlands: Free-thinking Democratic League Poland: Democratic Party – demokraci.pl, Spring, Russian: Constitutional Democratic Party Slovenia: Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, Zares South Korea: Progressive Party (1956), Uri Party, Grand Unified Democratic New Party Spain: Union, Progress and Democracy Switzerland: Ring of Independents United Kingdom: Liberal Party, Social Democratic Party Notable thinkers Some notable scholars and politicians ordered by date of birth who are generally considered as having made significant contributions to the evolution of social liberalism as a political ideology include: Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) John Stuart Mill(1806–1873) Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913) Lujo Brentano (1844–1931) Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923) Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) Émile Durkheim(1858–1917) John Atkinson Hobson (1858–1940) John Dewey (1859–1952) Friedrich Naumann(1860–1919) Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz(1864–1943) Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse(1864–1929) Tokuzō Fukuda (1874–1930) William Beveridge (1879–1963) Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) Mohammad Mossadegh (1882–1967) John Maynard Keynes(1883–1946) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) Pierre Elliot Trudeau (1919–2000) Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Piero Gobetti (1901–1926) Karl Popper (1902–1994) (1904–1986) Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004) Masao Maruyama (1914–1996) John Rawls (1921–2002) Don Chipp (1925–2006) Karl-Hermann Flach (1929–1973) Vlado Gotovac (1930–2000) Richard Rorty (1931–2007) Ronald Dworkin(1931–2013) Amartya Sen (born 1933) José G. Merquior (1941–1991) Bruce Ackerman (born 1943) Roh Moo-hyun (1946–2009) Martha Nussbaum (born 1947) Grigory Yavlinsky (born 1952) Paul Krugman (born 1953) Dirk Verhofstadt (born 1955) Justin Trudeau (born 1971) Robert Biedroń (born 1976) See also Classical liberalism Classical radicalism Constitutional liberalism Left-libertarianism Liberalism by country Modern liberalism in the United States Neo-libertarianism Progressivism Social democracy Social-liberal coalition Social market economy Notes References Sources Adams, Ian (2001). Political ideology today. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. . De Ruggiero, Guido (1959). The History of European Liberalism. Boston: Beacon Press. Faulks, Keith (1999). Political Sociology: A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. . Feuchtwanger, E. J. (1985). Democracy and Empire: Britain 1865-1914. London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd. . Richardson, James L. (2001). Contending Liberalisms in World Politics. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. . Slomp, Hans (2000). European Politics Into the Twenty-first Century: Integration and Division. Westport: Praeger Publishers. . Further reading External links Centre-left ideologies Centrism Liberalism Political culture Political ideologies Radicalism (historical) Social policy Social philosophy Syncretic political movements el:Φιλελευθερισμός#Κοινωνικός φιλελευθερισμός ή σοσιαλφιλελευθερισμός

Synecdoche

Synecdoche is a type of metonymy; it is a figure of speech that uses a term for a part of something to refer to the whole (pars pro toto), or vice versa (totum pro parte). The term is derived . Common English synecdoches include suits for businessmen, wheels for automobile, and boots for soldiers. Another example is the use of government buildings to refer to their resident agencies or bodies, such as The Pentagon for the United States Department of Defense and Downing Street or Number 10 for the office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the use of the name of a country's capital city to refer to the government of the country. Definition Synecdoche is a rhetorical trope and a kind of metonymy—a figure of speech using a term to denote one thing to refer to a related thing. Synecdoche (and thus metonymy) is distinct from metaphor, although in the past, it was considered a sub-species of metaphor, intending metaphor as a type of conceptual substitution (as Quintilian does in Book VIII). In Lanham's Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, the three terms possess somewhat restrictive definitions in tune with their etymologies from Greek: Metaphor: changing a word from its literal meaning to one not properly applicable but analogous to it; assertion of identity—rather than likeness as with simile. Metonymy: substituting an attribute of or object associated with something for the thing itself (e.g., substituting "the crown" for "the monarch"). Classification Synecdoche is often used as a type of personification by attaching a human aspect to a nonhuman thing. It is used in reference to political relations, including "having a footing", to mean a country or organization is in a position to act, or "the wrong hands", to describe opposing groups, usually in the context of military power. The two main types of synecdoche are microcosm and macrocosm. A microcosm uses a part of something to refer to the entirety. An example of this is saying "I need a hand" with a project, but needing the entire person. A macrocosm is the opposite, using the name of the entire structure of something to refer to a small part. An example of this is saying "the world" while referring to a certain country or part of the planet. The figure of speech is divided into the image (what the speaker uses to refer to something) and the subject (what is referred to). In politics, the residence or location of an executive can be used to represent the office itself. For example, "the White House" can mean the Executive Office of the President of the United States; "Buckingham Palace" can mean the monarchy of the United Kingdom; "the Sublime Porte" can mean the Ottoman Empire; and "the Kremlin" can mean the government of Russia. The Élysée Palace might indicate the President of the French Republic. Sonnets and other forms of love poetry frequently use synecdoches to characterize the beloved in terms of individual body parts rather than a coherent whole. This practice is especially common in the Petrarchan sonnet, where the idealised beloved is often described part by part, head-to-toe. Synecdoche is also popular in advertising. Since synecdoche uses a part to represent a whole, its use requires the audience to make associations and "fill in the gaps", engaging with the ad by thinking about the product. Moreover, catching the attention of an audience with advertising is often referred to by advertisers with the synecdoche "getting eyeballs". Synecdoche is common in spoken English, especially in reference to sports. The names of cities are used as shorthand for their sports teams to describe events and their outcomes, such as "Denver won Monday's game," while accuracy would require specifying the sports team's name. Kenneth Burke (1945), an American literary theorist, declared that in rhetoric, the four master tropes, or figures of speech, are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Burke's primary concern with these four master tropes is more than simply their figurative usage, but includes their role in the discovery and description of the truth. He described synecdoche as "part of the whole, whole for the part, container for the contained, sign for the thing signified, material for the thing made… cause for the effect, effect for the cause, genus for the species, species for the genus". In addition, Burke suggests synecdoche patterns can include reversible pairs such as disease-cure. Burke proclaimed the noblest synecdoche is found in the description of "microcosm and macrocosm" since microcosm is related to macrocosm as part to the whole, and either the whole can represent the part or the part can represent the whole". Burke compares synecdoche with the concept of "representation", especially in the political sense in which elected representatives stand in pars pro toto for their electorate. Examples Part referring to whole (pars pro toto) Referring to a person according to a single characteristic: "gray beard" meaning an old man Referring to a sword as a "blade" Describing a complete vehicle as "wheels", an entire airplane as a private jet, or a manual transmission vehicle as a "stick" General class name that denotes a specific member of that or an associated class Referring to a species of an organism or virus by the name of one of its hierarchical groups, e.g., "Coronavirus [specifically meaning the COVID-19 virus] is rampant throughout the city." Using technology specifically to refer to high technology or electronic devices Specific class name referring to general set of associated things "John Hancock" (used in the United States), for the signature of any person A genericized trademark, for example, "Xerox" for any variety of duplicate made on a photocopier, "Coke" for any variety of cola (or for any variety of soft drink, as in the southern United States), "Kleenex" for facial tissues, "Vaseline" for petroleum jelly, "Band-Aid" (in the United States) for any variety of adhesive bandage, "Tide" (US) for any variety of laundry detergent, "Hoover" (UK) for any variety of vacuum cleaner, or "Styrofoam" (US) for any product made of expanded polystyrene. Referring to material actually or supposedly used to make something "brass" for brass instruments, or the shell casings of bullet cartridges, or the medals and stars of high-ranking military officers "lead" for bullets, lead being the most common material for making bullets, or for the graphite core of a pencil "vinyl" for phonograph records "cement" for concrete, cement being just the binder in concrete Container refers to its contents "barrel" for a barrel of oil, or the equivalent volume of a standard barrel "keg" for a keg of beer "She drank the cup", to refer to her drinking of the cup's contents See also Antonomasia Bahuvrihi Category mistake Conceptual metaphor Hendiadys Holonymy Hyponymy Merism Meronymy Faulty generalization Fallacy of division Symbol Notes References Further reading External links Figures of speech Rhetoric Tropes by type

The Sovereign Individual

The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age is a 1997 non-fiction book by William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson. Later republished on 26 August 1999 by Touchstone, it forecasts the development of the twenty-first century; focusing on the rise of the internet and cyberspace, digital currency and digital economy, self-ownership and decentralization from the State. The Sovereign Individual has been recommended by members of the cryptocurrency community such as Naval Ravikant and Brian Armstrong. In 2020, the book was reprinted with a preface written by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Overview Originally, the book was published in 1997 as The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State and later it was republished in 1999 under its current title by Touchstone. Chapters The book contains eleven chapters and has 446 pages (400 pages of plain text, 46 pages of references, notes, and an appendix. The latest edition of the book with Thiel's foreword adds two more pages). The chapters are: The Transition of the Year 2000: The Fourth Stage of Human Society Megapolitical Transformations in Historic Perspective East of Eden: The Agricultural Revolution and the Sophistication of Violence The Last Days of Politics: Parallels Between the Senile Decline of the Holy Mother Church and the Nanny State The Life and Death of the Nation-State: Democracy and Nationalism as Resource Strategies in the Age of Violence The Megapolitics of the Information Age: The Triumph of Efficiency over Power Transcending Locality: The Emergence of the Cybereconomy The End of Egalitarian Economics: The Revolution in Earnings Capacity in a World Without Jobs Nationalism, Reaction, and the New Luddites The Twilight of Democracy Morality and Crime in the "Natural Economy" of the Information Age Content Rees-Mogg and Davidson's main thesis centres around self-ownership and the individual's independence from the State, forecasting the end of the nations and nation-states. In a chapter titled Nationalism, Reaction, and the New Luddites, they criticize nationalism and appeal more to giving the individual control over his destiny rather than the collectiveness given by nationalism. Rees-Mogg and Davidson also refer to a transition to the year 2000, being a birth of a new stage of Western civilization in the coming of the new millennium. With the rise of the information society, they argue, the individual would be freed from the oppression of government and the drags of prejudice: Rees-Mogg and Davidson also suggested that digital currency/cybermoney would supersede fiat currency: Rees-Mogg and Davidson's recall of "mathematical algorithms that have no physical existence" is similar to the functional mechanism of certain cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and other proof-of-work currencies. Rees-Mogg and Davidson have also predicted that with the rise of this new cyberspace, and consequently cybermoney, it will become harder for a nation-state to collect taxes from its citizens. They compare the State to a farmer keeping cows in a field to be milked but that "soon, the cows will have wings". They predict that for the government to collect taxes from its citizens in this type of society, it would have to violate human rights, even traditionally civil countries would have to resort and "turn nasty": Reception Peter Thiel, who wrote the preface to the 2020 printing, wrote that, among the many things that Rees-Mogg and Davidson got wrong, the biggest part was "perhaps their misjudgement in the rise of China and the prosperity of Hong Kong as an ideal type of government [under colonial rule]". In his 2018 book, The Bitcoin Standard, Saifedean Ammous mentions and calls The Sovereign Individual'''s prediction of digital currency "remarkable". Ammous also gives insight on The Sovereign Individual during the section titled Individual Sovereignty'', while also commending Davidson and Rees-Mogg's prediction of a digital currency as "remarkable". See also Self-ownership Cyberspace Cryptocurrency Notes References External links The Sovereign Individual at Simon & Schuster The Sovereign Individual First Touchstone Edition at Archive.org British non-fiction books 1997 non-fiction books English-language books Simon & Schuster books Books about the Internet Decentralization Criticism of democracy

Geniocracy

Geniocracy is the framework for a system of government which was first proposed by Raël (leader of the International Raëlian Movement) in 1977 and which advocates a certain minimal criterion of intelligence for political candidates and also the electorate. Definition The term geniocracy comes from the word genius, and describes a system that is designed to select for intelligence and compassion as the primary factors for governance. While having a democratic electoral apparatus, it differs from traditional liberal democracy by instead suggesting that candidates for office and the body electorate should meet a certain minimal criterion of problem-solving or creative intelligence. The thresholds proposed by the Raëlians are 50% above the mean for an electoral candidate and 10% above the mean for an elector. Notably, if the distribution of intelligence is assumed to be symmetric (as it is for the IQ), this would imply that the majority of population has no right to vote. Justifying the method of selection This method of selectivity is deliberate so as to address what the concept considers to be flaws in the current systems of democracy. The primary object of criticism is the inability of majoritarian consensus to provide a reasonable platform for intelligent decision-making for the purpose of solving problems permanently. Geniocracy's criticism of this system is that the institutions of democracy become more concerned with appealing to popular consensus through emotive issues than they are in making long-term critical decisions, especially those that may involve issues that are not immediately relevant to the electorate. It asserts that political mandate is something that is far too important to simply leave to popularity, and asserts that the critical decision-making that is required for government, especially in a world of globalization, cannot be based upon criteria of emotive or popular decision-making. In this respect, geniocracy derides liberal democracy as a form of "mediocracy". In a geniocracy, Earth would be ruled by a worldwide geniocratic government. Agenda Part of the geniocratic agenda is to promote the idea of a world government system, deriding the current state-system as inadequate for dealing with contemporary global issues that are typical of globalisation, such as environmentalism, social justice, human rights, and the current economic system. In line with this, geniocracy proposes a different economic model(where it is given a name called Humanitarianism in the book Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers). Response to criticism As a response to its controversial attitudes about selectivity, one of the more general responses is to point out that universal suffrage, the current system, already discriminates to some degree and varyingly in different countries as to who is allowed to vote. Primarily, this discrimination is against women, minority racial groups, refugees, immigrants, minority religious groups, minority ethnic groups, minors, elderly people, those living in poverty and homelessness, incarcerated and previously incarcerated people, and the mentally or physically incapacitated. This is on the basis that their ability to contribute to the decision-making process is either flawed or invalid for the purpose of the society. Status The current difficulty in the ideas of geniocracy is that the means of assessing intelligence are ill-defined. One idea offered by Raël in Geniocracy is to have specialists such as psychologists, neurologists, ethnologists, etc., perfect or choose among existing ones, a series of tests that would define each person's level of intelligence. They should be designed to measure intellectual potential rather than accumulation of knowledge. Some argue other components deemed necessary for a more rounded understanding of intelligence include concepts like emotional intelligence. As such, geniocracy's validity cannot really be assessed until better and more objective methods of intelligence assessment are made available. The matter of confronting moral problems that may arise is not addressed in the book Geniocracy; many leaders may be deeply intelligent and charismatic (having both high emotional/social intelligence and IQ) according to current means of measuring such factors, but no current scientific tests are a reliable enough measure for one's ability to make humanitarian choices (although online tests such as those used by retail chains to select job applicants may be relevant). The lack of scientific rigour necessary for inclusion of geniocracy as properly testable political ideology can be noted in number of modern and historical dictatorships as well as oligarchies. Because of the controversies surrounding geniocracy, Raël presents the idea as a classic utopia or provocative ideal and not necessarily a model that humanity will follow. Democratically defined regions The author of Geniocracy recommends (though does not necessitate) a world government with 12 regions. Inhabitants would vote for which region they want to be part of. After the regions are defined, they are further divided into 12 sectors after the same principle of democracy is applied. While sectors of the same region are defined as having equal numbers of inhabitants, the regions themselves may have different levels of population, which would be proportional to its voting power. See also Idiocracy (a dark comedy film) depicts the United States in 2505 where the vast majority are mentally backwards (by current standards) despite widespread use of IQ tests. Superman: Red Son ends with Lex Luthor establishing a utopian but elitist world government under the philosophy of "Luthorism" which is essentially a geniocracy run by Luthor and other geniuses. Plato's Republic Meritocracy Netocracy Noocracy Transhumanism Technocracy Notes References Rael, La géniocratie . L'Edition du message, 1977. . Rael, Geniocracy: Government of the People, for the People, by the Geniuses . Nova Distribution, 2008. Further reading External links Geniocracy.org Geniocracy Review on RaelNews Geniocracy piece on RaelRadio 'Geniocracy is the solution' - article on Raelnews Raëlian practices Religious texts Books about human intelligence

Postliberalism

Postliberalism is an emergent political philosophy that critiques and seeks to move beyond the dominant liberal paradigm of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Proponents argue that liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights, free markets, and limited government, has failed to adequately address societal challenges such as economic inequality, environmental degradation, social alienation, family breakdown, and a perceived loss of community and social cohesion. Postliberals advocate for a more communitarian approach that prioritizes the common good, social solidarity, and the cultivation of virtue, often drawing on traditional moral and religious frameworks. They tend to be skeptical of unconstrained individualism, instead seeing individuals as more tightly bound up in networks of obligations in families, communities, tribes, and faiths, arguing for a greater role for the state in shaping culture and promoting shared values. Postliberal thinkers come from both the left and the right, and the movement is associated with a diverse range of ideas, including economic nationalism, localism, and a critique of liberal democracy itself. History Postliberalism has adherents on both the political left and right. It first developed in the United Kingdom out of a movement within the Labour Party called Blue Labour. Early British theorists included John Gray, Maurice Glasman, Phillip Blond, Adrian Pabst, John Milbank, and Jon Cruddas. British postliberalism remains a broadly centre-left ideology that grew out of Christian socialism. In the 2020s, some factions within the Conservative Party have adopted elements of postliberalism and national conservatism. In the United States, postliberalism has been more influential among conservatives critical of the fusionist synthesis of free markets and traditional values that developed in the 1950s such as Patrick Deneen, Rod Dreher, and Adrian Vermeule, as well as the Israeli conservative philosopher Yoram Hazony. Ideology Communitarianism The postliberal critique contends that liberalism, in both its economic and cultural forms, undermines the social and communal bonds on which human flourishing depends. Central to postliberal thought is the idea that human beings are not purely autonomous individuals but are shaped by their social and cultural contexts. Postliberals argue that the liberal focus on individual rights and freedoms has undermined the importance of community, family, and tradition in providing a sense of meaning and belonging. They maintain that a healthy society requires a shared sense of purpose and a commitment to the common good, which liberalism has failed to provide. Drawing on a reading of social contract theorists like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as well as J. S. Mill and John Rawls, postliberals argue liberalism promotes an atomized individualism at odds with human sociability. Patrick Deneen argues that liberalism, while claiming neutrality, influences people to approach commitments and relationships with flexibility, treating them as interchangeable and open to renegotiation, thereby encouraging loose connections. Some postliberal feminists such as Louise Perry, Nina Power, Christine Emba, and Mary Harrington argue that the sexual revolution of the 1960s gave rise to a set of sexual ethics and norms that prioritized individual autonomy, reproductive rights, and sexual libertinism and that this has proved harmful to women. Pluralism Postliberals also challenge the liberal conception of the state as a neutral arbiter between competing interests. They argue that the state should actively promote a particular vision of the good life, based on the values and traditions of the community it serves. This may involve measures to protect and promote traditional institutions such as the family, religion, and local associations, as well as a more restrictive approach to issues such as immigration and cultural diversity. "Postliberals reject the fiction of a purely neutral state, instead suggesting that the state should play an active role in promoting the common good and ensuring social cohesion." Liberal philosophers such as John Rawls have characterized liberalism as a political regime in which the state is (or should seek to be) neutral with regard to personal values and conceptions of the good life. Criticizing this claim, Patrick Deneen argues that any society "ultimately can't be neutral on questions about what it is we value as a society. If we're going to be a society in any sense, if we're going to be a kind of order in any sense, there are always going to be fundamental beliefs and fundamental commitments that are going to be predominant." As an alternative, postliberals advocate a politics oriented towards the common good, seeking to balance individual rights with social responsibilities. Others focus on economic issues, critiquing the outcomes of liberal capitalism and proposing alternative models that are more regulated and socially embedded. Some postliberals also emphasize the importance of cultural traditions, national identity, and environmental conservation. Free market In the economic realm, postliberals criticize the liberal commitment to free markets, arguing that it has led to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, while leaving many people behind, fostering stratification between cosmopolitan elites and rooted working classes. They advocate for a more interventionist role for the state in managing the economy, including protectionist policies, and measures to reduce economic inequality, protect workers' rights, and promote the development of local communities. English philosopher John Gray has argued that "the unfettered free market and globalization undermined the very foundations of a modern open market economy". Patrick Deneen similarly argued:The expansion of liberalism rests upon a vicious and reinforcing cycle in which state expansion secures the end of individual fragmentation, in turn requiring further state expansion to control a society without shared norms, practices, or beliefs. Liberalism thus increasingly requires a legal and administrative regime, driven by the imperative of replacing all nonliberal forms of support for human flourishing (such as schools, medicine, and charity), and hollowing any deeply held sense of shared future or fate among the citizenry. International relations Postliberal approaches to international relations and global politics have been most fully developed by John Milbank, Adrian Pabst, and Patrick J. Deneen. Postliberalism attributes the crisis in international relations to an intensifying liberalism that it argues undermines itself. Unlike John Ikenberry’s perspective, which posits that the liberal international order is threatened by illiberal forces and requires more liberalism to counteract this threat, postliberals perceive the rise of illiberal forces as a response to what they view as liberalism's inherent contradictions. Pabst suggests that the emergence of populism and civilization states reflects a reaction against global politics that, in their view, neglects national and local concerns, idealizes utopian visions over real places, and emphasizes individual identity at the expense of shared belonging. They argue that liberalism, which no longer promotes a substantive good, becomes ambiguous, fostering individual freedoms while failing to manage the resulting forces both internationally and nationally. According to this viewpoint, liberalism lacks an inherent, preordained purpose. The United States-led liberal order established after World War II is seen by some scholars as mirroring the trajectory of domestic liberalism. Milbank and Pabst contend that US hegemony treats nation-states as large-scale liberal egos, grounded in American individualism and voluntarism, and disseminated through imperial means to achieve national goals. Since the 1970s, they argue, global governance has strengthened state power and expanded individual freedoms domestically, while diminishing local decision-making and distancing authority from national democratic forums. According to their analysis, "Enlightenment liberalism ironically threatens to turn war into an unlimited action against an enemy of civilization as such", which resonates with the ideas of German jurist Carl Schmitt. They believe this expansionist liberal universalism has contributed to the rise of civilizational blocs. Criticism Critics argue that specifying the content of the common good in presently pluralistic societies presents challenges. Liberal critics argue that more statist versions of postliberalism risk excessively curtailing individual liberty in their visions of using state power to enforce a substantive conception of the good, while other postliberals point to a more pluralistic understanding. Critics on the left argue that postliberalism endorses socially reactionary attitudes and that this is morally objectionable. One critic observed that "because of its alleged interest in the public good but its conservative (Republican) orientation, postliberalism is ultimately incoherent." Socialist critic J. J. Porter has accused postliberalism of ultimately undermining its own conditions of possibility, saying that "it wants to preserve many of the fruits of liberalism while doing away with the structure from which they grow". Critics on the free-market right argue that postliberalism’s embrace of economic planning and regulation and skepticism of the free market risks damaging economic growth. Other conservative critics observed that postliberalism undervalues the importance of individual freedom and the economic benefits of free market capitalism. Relation to other ideologies Elements of postliberal political ideas have been integral to the development of Blue Labour and, more recently, national conservatism and factions within the British Conservative Party. Many analysts have also identified the substantial influence of Catholic social teaching on postliberalism itself. Some scholars have noted the influence of American historian and cultural critic Christopher Lasch on postliberalism. Impact on politics Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his political party, Fidesz, have been considered by many to be postliberal or national conservative in character. In a speech given by Orbán on 14 September 2023, he said: "The postliberal era we look forward to, which will replace the current progressive-liberal era, will not come automatically. Someone has to make it happen. And who will make it happen, if not us?" In the United Kingdom, many members of the New Conservatives faction of the Conservative Party, such as Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, have either self-identified with postliberalism or been considered by others to be aligned with it. On the British left, the Blue Labour tradition has featured some members of Parliament or life peers in the House of Lords including Jon Cruddas and Lord Maurice Glasman, while postliberal writers Adrian Pabst and Sebastian Milbank have argued that the leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, has shown some interest in policies advocated by Blue Labour thinkers. In the United States, several Republican politicians have been identified with postliberal and national conservative ideas, particularly Senators JD Vance, Josh Hawley, and Marco Rubio. Prominent figures Writers John Gray Patrick Deneen John Milbank Adrian Pabst Yoram Hazony Sohrab Ahmari Frank Furedi Adrian Vermeule Christine Emba Robert Heinlein Politicians Viktor Orbán Balázs Orbán Jon Cruddas Maurice Glasman Danny Kruger Miriam Cates JD Vance Josh Hawley Marco Rubio Ryszard Legutko See also Blue Labour National conservatism Illiberal democracy Syncretic politics Radical orthodoxy Integralism Common good constitutionalism References Communitarianism Conservatism Reactionary Democratic backsliding Josh Hawley Marco Rubio JD Vance

Sovereigntism

Sovereigntism, sovereignism or souverainism (from , , meaning "the ideology of sovereignty") is the notion of having control over one's conditions of existence, whether at the level of the self, social group, region, nation or globe. Typically used for describing the acquiring or preserving political independence of a nation or a region, a sovereigntist aims to "take back control" from perceived powerful forces, either against internal subversive minority groups (ethnic, sexual or gender), or from external global governance institutions, federalism and supranational unions. It generally leans instead toward isolationism, and can be associated with certain independence movements, but has also been used to justify violating the independence of other nations. Classification Sovereigntism has a cultural as well as political component and can take the form of hostility towards outsiders having different values or different countries or regions of origin. Sovereigntist groups are associated with populism since they typically claim legitimacy for carrying out the sovereign will of the people. While leftist sovereigntists tend to think of their national border as a defensive line against the corrosive effects of neo-liberal economics, right wing sovereigntists see it more as a filter protecting the sovereign people from undesired new members. Though there are wide differences in ideology and historical context between sovereigntist movements, those of the twenty first century can be thought of as belonging to three separate categories: conservative sovereigntism, archeo-sovereigntism, and neo-sovereigntism. Conservative sovereignism embraces the national Westphalian model of sovereignty seeking to preserve the interstate order with norms promoting global economic order but halting further advances towards political integration. Some vestiges of colonialism remain, with old powers retaining what they see as historical special responsibilities to intervene in former possessions, such as in the case of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Amongst rising powers, neo-sovereigntism is concerned with issues of autonomism, especially against more privileged nations with concentrated power in transnational entities such as the UN security council or G7. It seeks to strengthen norms and agreements protecting the independence of each state, granting their equality, and restraining more powerful states from attempts to influence the behavior of other nations. Archeo-sovereigntism is the most radical, rejecting forces of globalization and restraints on states by transnational bodies, norms and agreements, calling for a return to a pre- World War II order when states were freer from such interference. Examples in Europe include the Front National in France, the Lega Nord in Italy, the Dansk Folk Party in Denmark, and the UKIP in the UK. In a paper published in the European Review of International Studies outlining these three major tendencies, researchers Alles and Badie summarised them thus: Sovereigntist populist parties in Europe In Europe, sovereigntist populisms political movements divide (on the one hand) between those that seek to leave the European Union completely (or oppose joining it) and (on the other), those who aim for a "Europe of the nations", a less integrated Europe respecting the individual characteristics and sovereignty of constituent states. Supporters of these doctrines tend to regard themselves as Euro-realists opposed to the Euro-federalists and call for a more confederal version of a European Union. (The European Union is not a federation but shares many characteristics of one.) Thus, sovereigntism in Europe is opposed to federalism and typically involves nationalism, particularly in the United Kingdom (which withdrew from the EU in 2020) and in France where parties on the left and right margins lean strongly towards it. European Union After the 2024 European Parliament election four political groups in the European Parliament have been formed which contain sovereignist parties: European Conservatives and Reformists Europe of Sovereign Nations Patriots for Europe France National Rally (right-wing nationalist) The Patriots (Gaullist and right-wing nationalist) Germany Parties with tendencies that could be described also as sovereigntist can be also found in Germany: Alternative for Germany (right-wing, nationalist, conservative) Greece Parties with tendencies that could be described also as sovereigntists can also be found in Greece: Golden Dawn (ethnic nationalist, neofascist) Popular Orthodox Rally (ethnic nationalist, religious conservatism) Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, in power since 2010, have increasingly followed a sovereigntist policy against the European Union. On December 12, 2023, the Hungarian National Assembly adopted the Sovereignty Protection Act, which creates a new government agency, called the Sovereignty Protection Office, to be established by February 1, 2024. It will have broad powers to investigate alleged attacks on Hungarian sovereignty, including the activities of civic organizations supported from abroad. Italy Five Star Movement (populist, left-wing populism) Lega Nord (Conservatism, Populism, Euroscepticism) Lega (Right-wing populism, Federalism) Brothers of Italy (National conservatism, Right-wing populism) Russia Since 2006, Vladimir Putin has espoused the current Russian sovereigntist view of a political, economic, and cultural battle between sovereign peoples of Russia on one side, and on the other- transnational institutions with their neoliberal and cosmopolitan ideologies undermining Russia's sovereignty and cultural existence. In Putinism, the "national wealth" of the multiethnic Russian peoples (its morality, values, memory of its forefathers and its culture) both defines and is protected by its sovereignty. Putin advisor Vladislav Surkov articulated the threat to "sovereign democracy" posed by international organizations serving the interest of NATO, the OSCE, and the unipolar world order controlled by the United States. According to the ideology of Putinism, Georgian and Ukrainian sovereignty could not be respected since it had already been lost due to their color revolutions, seen as a collapse of borders protecting them from being engulfed culturally, economically and politically by Europe and the West. As a cultural and political protector against threatening Western powers, the idea of a sovereign union of multiple peoples under Russia's leadership has been employed as a legitimation theory for imperial expansion. This usage predates the Soviet Union, tracing back to Pan-slavism’s origins in the 16th century, later becoming integrated with Russian nationalism, imperialism and Orthodox messianism in the 19th century. Catalonia In the Parliament of Catalonia, parties explicitly supporting independence from Spain are Together for Catalonia (JxCat), heir of the former Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC)); Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), and Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP). United Kingdom Parties with policies that could be described as sovereigntist can be also found in United Kingdom; notably by Reform UK and the Johnson-led Conservative Party (UK) (with respect to the European Union through hard Brexit), the Scottish National Party and (Party of Wales), and in Northern Ireland. North America Canada In the Canadian province of Quebec, souverainisme or sovereigntism refers to the Quebec sovereignty movement, which argues for Quebec to separate from Canada and become an independent country. Many leaders in the movement, notably René Lévesque, have preferred the terms "sovereignty" and "sovereigntist" over other common names such as separatist or independentist, although this terminology may be objected to by opponents. Quebec Parti Québécois (centre-left, nationalist and social democratic) Bloc Québécois (centre-left, nationalist and social democratic, represents Quebec separatism in Canada's federal parliament) Option nationale (centre-left, nationalist and progressive) Québec solidaire (left-wing, democratic socialist) United States Coupled with its history of isolationism and sense of American exceptionalism, US sovereigntism is largely a conservative perspective, celebrating both American self-definition and liberty to engage in unilateral action. Sovereigntism in foreign policy is charactized by opposition to multilateral regimes relating to climate change, war crimes, arms control and international declaration of human rights. The dominant US sovereigntist perspective is currently that of Trumpism and has three dimensions: World order and peace is best secured by sovereign states looking after themselves, as opposed to the rules-based international order of interdependent and integrated countries. The needs of the American people come first before any other concern of government. Any other prioritization violates the sovereignty of the people. Sovereigntism is used partisan weapon, where anyone who differs with Trumpian formulations of sovereignty are identified as political enemies. A more extreme conservative view of popular sovereignty involves a radical unwinding of centralized government and an expansion of regional sovereignty, where freedoms are controlled at the local level, not adjudicated at the federal level. From the perspective of the tea party and continuing among followers of Trumpism, the populist concept of the sovereign people refers exclusively to a specifically defined Christian community that "invites people of different backgrounds to unite under a common 'American' sense of self". Similar to the perspective of Putinism, those individuals who maintain a separate minority identity are not only excluded, but are regarded as a threat to the majority's sovereignty, especially when they seek legal redress for violation of their human rights as defined by constitutional and international norms. See also References Sovereignty Political terminology Conservatism in France Politics of Quebec Political terminology in Canada

Democracy

Democracy (from , dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections. In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. Who is considered part of "the people" and how authority is shared among or delegated by the people has changed over time and at different rates in different countries. Features of democracy oftentimes include freedom of assembly, association, personal property, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights. The notion of democracy has evolved considerably over time. Throughout history, one can find evidence of direct democracy, in which communities make decisions through popular assembly. Today, the dominant form of democracy is representative democracy, where citizens elect government officials to govern on their behalf such as in a parliamentary or presidential democracy. Most democracies apply in most cases majority rule, but in some cases plurality rule, supermajority rule (e.g. constitution) or consensus rule (e.g. Switzerland) are applied. They serve the crucial purpose of inclusiveness and broader legitimacy on sensitive issues—counterbalancing majoritarianism—and therefore mostly take precedence on a constitutional level. In the common variant of liberal democracy, the powers of the majority are exercised within the framework of a representative democracy, but a constitution and supreme court limit the majority and protect the minority—usually through securing the enjoyment by all of certain individual rights, such as freedom of speech or freedom of association. The term appeared in the 5th century BC in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean "rule of the people", in contrast to aristocracy (, ), meaning "rule of an elite". Western democracy, as distinct from that which existed in antiquity, is generally considered to have originated in city-states such as those in Classical Athens and the Roman Republic, where various degrees of enfranchisement of the free male population were observed. In virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic citizenship was initially restricted to an elite class, which was later extended to all adult citizens. In most modern democracies, this was achieved through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Democracy contrasts with forms of government where power is not vested in the general population of a state, such as authoritarian systems. World public opinion strongly favors democratic systems of government. According to the V-Dem Democracy indices and The Economist Democracy Index, less than half the world's population lives in a democracy . Characteristics Although democracy is generally understood to be defined by voting, no consensus exists on a precise definition of democracy. Karl Popper says that the "classical" view of democracy is, "in brief, the theory that democracy is the rule of the people and that the people have a right to rule". One study identified 2,234 adjectives used to describe democracy in the English language. Democratic principles are reflected in all eligible citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to legislative processes. For example, in a representative democracy, every vote has (in theory) equal weight, and the freedom of eligible citizens is secured by legitimised rights and liberties which are typically enshrined in a constitution, while other uses of "democracy" may encompass direct democracy, in which citizens vote on issues directly. According to the United Nations, democracy "provides an environment that respects human rights and fundamental freedoms, and in which the freely expressed will of people is exercised." One theory holds that democracy requires three fundamental principles: upward control (sovereignty residing at the lowest levels of authority), political equality, and social norms by which individuals and institutions only consider acceptable acts that reflect the first two principles of upward control and political equality. Legal equality, political freedom and rule of law are often identified by commentators as foundational characteristics for a well-functioning democracy. In some countries, notably in the United Kingdom (which originated the Westminster system), the dominant principle is that of parliamentary sovereignty, while maintaining judicial independence. In India, parliamentary sovereignty is subject to the Constitution of India which includes judicial review. Though the term "democracy" is typically used in the context of a political state, the principles also are potentially applicable to private organisations, such as clubs, societies and firms. Democracies may use many different decision-making methods, but majority rule is the dominant form. Without compensation, like legal protections of individual or group rights, political minorities can be oppressed by the "tyranny of the majority". Majority rule involves a competitive approach, opposed to consensus democracy, creating the need that elections, and generally deliberation, be substantively and procedurally "fair"," i.e. just and equitable. In some countries, freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press are considered important to ensure that voters are well informed, enabling them to vote according to their own interests and beliefs. It has also been suggested that a basic feature of democracy is the capacity of all voters to participate freely and fully in the life of their society. With its emphasis on notions of social contract and the collective will of all the voters, democracy can also be characterised as a form of political collectivism because it is defined as a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in lawmaking. Republics, though often popularly associated with democracy because of the shared principle of rule by consent of the governed, are not necessarily democracies, as republicanism does not specify how the people are to rule. Classically the term "republic" encompassed both democracies and aristocracies. In a modern sense the republican form of government is a form of government without a monarch. Because of this, democracies can be republics or constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom. History Democratic assemblies are as old as the human species and are found throughout human history, but up until the nineteenth century, major political figures have largely opposed democracy. Republican theorists linked democracy to small size: as political units grew in size, the likelihood increased that the government would turn despotic. At the same time, small political units were vulnerable to conquest. Montesquieu wrote, "If a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it is large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection." According to Johns Hopkins University political scientist Daniel Deudney, the creation of the United States, with its large size and its system of checks and balances, was a solution to the dual problems of size. Forms of democracy occurred organically in societies around the world that had no contact with each other. Retrospectively different polities, outside of declared democracies, have been described as proto-democratic. Origins Greece and Rome The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought in the city-state of Athens during classical antiquity. The word comes from dêmos '(common) people' and krátos 'force/might'. Under Cleisthenes, what is generally held as the first example of a type of democracy in 508–507 BC was established in Athens. Cleisthenes is referred to as "the father of Athenian democracy". The first attested use of the word democracy is found in prose works of the 430s BC, such as Herodotus' Histories, but its usage was older by several decades, as two Athenians born in the 470s were named Democrates, a new political name—likely in support of democracy—given at a time of debates over constitutional issues in Athens. Aeschylus also strongly alludes to the word in his play The Suppliants, staged in c.463 BC, where he mentions "the demos's ruling hand" [demou kratousa cheir]. Before that time, the word used to define the new political system of Cleisthenes was probably isonomia, meaning political equality. Athenian democracy took the form of direct democracy, and it had two distinguishing features: the random selection of ordinary citizens to fill the few existing government administrative and judicial offices, and a legislative assembly consisting of all Athenian citizens. All eligible citizens were allowed to speak and vote in the assembly, which set the laws of the city-state. However, Athenian citizenship excluded women, slaves, foreigners (μέτοικοι / métoikoi), and youths below the age of military service. Effectively, only 1 in 4 residents in Athens qualified as citizens. Owning land was not a requirement for citizenship. The exclusion of large parts of the population from the citizen body is closely related to the ancient understanding of citizenship. In most of antiquity the benefit of citizenship was tied to the obligation to fight war campaigns. Athenian democracy was not only direct in the sense that decisions were made by the assembled people, but also the most direct in the sense that the people through the assembly, boule and courts of law controlled the entire political process and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in the public business. Even though the rights of the individual were not secured by the Athenian constitution in the modern sense (the ancient Greeks had no word for "rights"), those who were citizens of Athens enjoyed their liberties not in opposition to the government but by living in a city that was not subject to another power and by not being subjects themselves to the rule of another person. Range voting appeared in Sparta as early as 700 BC. The Spartan ecclesia was an assembly of the people, held once a month, in which every male citizen of at least 20 years of age could participate. In the assembly, Spartans elected leaders and cast votes by range voting and shouting (the vote is then decided on how loudly the crowd shouts). Aristotle called this "childish", as compared with the stone voting ballots used by the Athenian citizenry. Sparta adopted it because of its simplicity, and to prevent any biased voting, buying, or cheating that was predominant in the early democratic elections. Even though the Roman Republic contributed significantly to many aspects of democracy, only a minority of Romans were citizens with votes in elections for representatives. The votes of the powerful were given more weight through a system of weighted voting, so most high officials, including members of the Senate, came from a few wealthy and noble families. In addition, the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom was the first case in the Western world of a polity being formed with the explicit purpose of being a republic, although it didn't have much of a democracy. The Roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries. Ancient India Vaishali, capital city of the Vajjika League (Vrijji mahajanapada) of India, is considered one of the first examples of a republic around the 6th century BC. Americas Other cultures, such as the Iroquois in the Americas also developed a form of democratic society between 1450 and 1660 (and possibly in 1142), well before contact with the Europeans. This democracy continues to the present day and is the world's oldest standing representative democracy. Africa Middle Ages While most regions in Europe during the Middle Ages were ruled by clergy or feudal lords, there existed various systems involving elections or assemblies, although often only involving a small part of the population. In Scandinavia, bodies known as things consisted of freemen presided by a lawspeaker. These deliberative bodies were responsible for settling political questions, and variants included the Althing in Iceland and the Løgting in the Faeroe Islands. The veche, found in Eastern Europe, was a similar body to the Scandinavian thing. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope has been elected by a papal conclave composed of cardinals since 1059. The first documented parliamentary body in Europe was the Cortes of León. Established by Alfonso IX in 1188, the Cortes had authority over setting taxation, foreign affairs and legislating, though the exact nature of its role remains disputed. The Republic of Ragusa, established in 1358 and centered around the city of Dubrovnik, provided representation and voting rights to its male aristocracy only. Various Italian city-states and polities had republic forms of government. For instance, the Republic of Florence, established in 1115, was led by the Signoria whose members were chosen by sortition. In the 10th–15th century Frisia, a distinctly non-feudal society, the right to vote on local matters and on county officials was based on land size. The Kouroukan Fouga divided the Mali Empire into ruling clans (lineages) that were represented at a great assembly called the Gbara. However, the charter made Mali more similar to a constitutional monarchy than a democratic republic. The Parliament of England had its roots in the restrictions on the power of kings written into Magna Carta (1215), which explicitly protected certain rights of the King's subjects and implicitly supported what became the English writ of habeas corpus, safeguarding individual freedom against unlawful imprisonment with the right to appeal. The first representative national assembly in England was Simon de Montfort's Parliament in 1265. The emergence of petitioning is some of the earliest evidence of parliament being used as a forum to address the general grievances of ordinary people. However, the power to call parliament remained at the pleasure of the monarch. Studies have linked the emergence of parliamentary institutions in Europe during the medieval period to urban agglomeration and the creation of new classes, such as artisans, as well as the presence of nobility and religious elites. Scholars have also linked the emergence of representative government to Europe's relative political fragmentation. Political scientist David Stasavage links the fragmentation of Europe, and its subsequent democratization, to the manner in which the Roman Empire collapsed: Roman territory was conquered by small fragmented groups of Germanic tribes, thus leading to the creation of small political units where rulers were relatively weak and needed the consent of the governed to ward off foreign threats. In Poland, noble democracy was characterized by an increase in the activity of the middle nobility, which wanted to increase their share in exercising power at the expense of the magnates. Magnates dominated the most important offices in the state (secular and ecclesiastical) and sat on the royal council, later the senate. The growing importance of the middle nobility had an impact on the establishment of the institution of the land sejmik (local assembly), which subsequently obtained more rights. During the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century, sejmiks received more and more power and became the most important institutions of local power. In 1454, Casimir IV Jagiellon granted the sejmiks the right to decide on taxes and to convene a mass mobilization in the Nieszawa Statutes. He also pledged not to create new laws without their consent. Modern era Early modern period In 17th century England, there was renewed interest in Magna Carta. The Parliament of England passed the Petition of Right in 1628 which established certain liberties for subjects. The English Civil War (1642–1651) was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament, during which the idea of a political party took form with groups debating rights to political representation during the Putney Debates of 1647. Subsequently, the Protectorate (1653–59) and the English Restoration (1660) restored more autocratic rule, although Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679 which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Bill of Rights was enacted in 1689 which codified certain rights and liberties and is still in effect. The Bill set out the requirement for regular elections, rules for freedom of speech in Parliament and limited the power of the monarch, ensuring that, unlike much of Europe at the time, royal absolutism would not prevail. Economic historians Douglass North and Barry Weingast have characterized the institutions implemented in the Glorious Revolution as a resounding success in terms of restraining the government and ensuring protection for property rights. Renewed interest in the Magna Carta, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution in the 17th century prompted the growth of political philosophy on the British Isles. Thomas Hobbes was the first philosopher to articulate a detailed social contract theory. Writing in the Leviathan (1651), Hobbes theorized that individuals living in the state of nature led lives that were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and constantly waged a war of all against all. In order to prevent the occurrence of an anarchic state of nature, Hobbes reasoned that individuals ceded their rights to a strong, authoritarian power. In other words, Hobbes advocated for an absolute monarchy which, in his opinion, was the best form of government. Later, philosopher and physician John Locke would posit a different interpretation of social contract theory. Writing in his Two Treatises of Government (1689), Locke posited that all individuals possessed the inalienable rights to life, liberty and estate (property). According to Locke, individuals would voluntarily come together to form a state for the purposes of defending their rights. Particularly important for Locke were property rights, whose protection Locke deemed to be a government's primary purpose. Furthermore, Locke asserted that governments were legitimate only if they held the consent of the governed. For Locke, citizens had the right to revolt against a government that acted against their interest or became tyrannical. Although they were not widely read during his lifetime, Locke's works are considered the founding documents of liberal thought and profoundly influenced the leaders of the American Revolution and later the French Revolution. His liberal democratic framework of governance remains the preeminent form of democracy in the world. In the Cossack republics of Ukraine in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Cossack Hetmanate and Zaporizhian Sich, the holder of the highest post of Hetman was elected by the representatives from the country's districts. In North America, representative government began in Jamestown, Virginia, with the election of the House of Burgesses (forerunner of the Virginia General Assembly) in 1619. English Puritans who migrated from 1620 established colonies in New England whose local governance was democratic; although these local assemblies had some small amounts of devolved power, the ultimate authority was held by the Crown and the English Parliament. The Puritans (Pilgrim Fathers), Baptists, and Quakers who founded these colonies applied the democratic organisation of their congregations also to the administration of their communities in worldly matters. 18th and 19th centuries The first Parliament of Great Britain was established in 1707, after the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland under the Acts of Union. Two key documents of the UK's uncodified constitution, the English Declaration of Right, 1689 (restated in the Bill of Rights 1689) and the Scottish Claim of Right 1689, had both cemented Parliament's position as the supreme law-making body and said that the "election of members of Parliament ought to be free". However, Parliament was only elected by male property owners, which amounted to 3% of the population in 1780. The first known British person of African heritage to vote in a general election, Ignatius Sancho, voted in 1774 and 1780. During the Age of Liberty in Sweden (1718–1772), civil rights were expanded and power shifted from the monarch to parliament. The taxed peasantry was represented in parliament, although with little influence, but commoners without taxed property had no suffrage. The creation of the short-lived Corsican Republic in 1755 was an early attempt to adopt a democratic constitution (all men and women above age of 25 could vote). This Corsican Constitution was the first based on Enlightenment principles and included female suffrage, something that was not included in most other democracies until the 20th century. Colonial America had similar property qualifications as Britain, and in the period before 1776 the abundance and availability of land meant that large numbers of colonists met such requirements with at least 60 per cent of adult white males able to vote. The great majority of white men were farmers who met the property ownership or taxpaying requirements. With few exceptions, no blacks or women could vote. Vermont, which, on declaring independence of Great Britain in 1777, adopted a constitution modelled on Pennsylvania's citizenship and democratic suffrage for males with or without property. The United States Constitution of 1787 is the oldest surviving, still active, governmental codified constitution. The Constitution provided for an elected government and protected civil rights and liberties, but did not end slavery nor extend voting rights in the United States, instead leaving the issue of suffrage to the individual states. Generally, states limited suffrage to white male property owners and taxpayers. At the time of the first Presidential election in 1789, about 6% of the population was eligible to vote. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only. The Bill of Rights in 1791 set limits on government power to protect personal freedoms but had little impact on judgements by the courts for the first 130 years after ratification. In 1789, Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the National Convention was elected by all men in 1792. The Polish-Lithuanian Constitution of 3 May 1791 sought to implement a more effective constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. In force for less than 19 months, it was declared null and void by the Grodno Sejm that met in 1793. Nonetheless, the 1791 Constitution helped keep alive Polish aspirations for the eventual restoration of the country's sovereignty over a century later. In the United States, the 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states. Voter turnout soared during the 1830s, reaching about 80% of the adult white male population in the 1840 presidential election. North Carolina was the last state to abolish property qualification in 1856 resulting in a close approximation to universal white male suffrage (however tax-paying requirements remained in five states in 1860 and survived in two states until the 20th century). In the 1860 United States census, the slave population had grown to four million, and in Reconstruction after the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed: the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males a nominal right to vote. Full enfranchisement of citizens was not secured until after the civil rights movement gained passage by the US Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The voting franchise in the United Kingdom was expanded and made more uniform in a series of reforms that began with the Reform Act 1832 and continued into the 20th century, notably with the Representation of the People Act 1918 and the Equal Franchise Act 1928. Universal male suffrage was established in France in March 1848 in the wake of the French Revolution of 1848. During that year, several revolutions broke out in Europe as rulers were confronted with popular demands for liberal constitutions and more democratic government. In 1876, the Ottoman Empire transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, and held two elections the next year to elect members to her newly formed parliament. Provisional Electoral Regulations were issued, stating that the elected members of the Provincial Administrative Councils would elect members to the first Parliament. Later that year, a new constitution was promulgated, which provided for a bicameral Parliament with a Senate appointed by the Sultan and a popularly elected Chamber of Deputies. Only men above the age of 30 who were competent in Turkish and had full civil rights were allowed to stand for election. Reasons for disqualification included holding dual citizenship, being employed by a foreign government, being bankrupt, employed as a servant, or having "notoriety for ill deeds". Full universal suffrage was achieved in 1934. In 1893, the self-governing colony New Zealand became the first country in the world (except for the short-lived 18th-century Corsican Republic) to establish active universal suffrage by recognizing women as having the right to vote. 20th and 21st centuries 20th-century transitions to liberal democracy have come in successive "waves of democracy", variously resulting from wars, revolutions, decolonisation, and religious and economic circumstances. Global waves of "democratic regression" reversing democratization, have also occurred in the 1920s and 30s, in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the 2010s. World War I and the dissolution of the autocratic Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires resulted in the creation of new nation-states in Europe, most of them at least nominally democratic. In the 1920s democratic movements flourished and women's suffrage advanced, but the Great Depression brought disenchantment and most of the countries of Europe, Latin America, and Asia turned to strong-man rule or dictatorships. Fascism and dictatorships flourished in Nazi Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as non-democratic governments in the Baltics, the Balkans, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Japan, among others. World War II brought a definitive reversal of this trend in Western Europe. The democratisation of the American, British, and French sectors of occupied Germany (disputed), Austria, Italy, and the occupied Japan served as a model for the later theory of government change. However, most of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet sector of Germany fell into the non-democratic Soviet-dominated bloc. The war was followed by decolonisation, and again most of the new independent states had nominally democratic constitutions. India emerged as the world's largest democracy and continues to be so. Countries that were once part of the British Empire often adopted the British Westminster system. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights mandated democracy: By 1960, the vast majority of country-states were nominally democracies, although most of the world's populations lived in nominal democracies that experienced sham elections, and other forms of subterfuge (particularly in "Communist" states and the former colonies). A subsequent wave of democratisation brought substantial gains toward true liberal democracy for many states, dubbed "third wave of democracy". Portugal, Spain, and several of the military dictatorships in South America returned to civilian rule in the 1970s and 1980s. This was followed by countries in East and South Asia by the mid-to-late 1980s. Economic malaise in the 1980s, along with resentment of Soviet oppression, contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the associated end of the Cold War, and the democratisation and liberalisation of the former Eastern bloc countries. The most successful of the new democracies were those geographically and culturally closest to western Europe, and they are now either part of the European Union or candidate states. In 1986, after the toppling of the most prominent Asian dictatorship, the only democratic state of its kind at the time emerged in the Philippines with the rise of Corazon Aquino, who would later be known as the mother of Asian democracy. The liberal trend spread to some states in Africa in the 1990s, most prominently in South Africa. Some recent examples of attempts of liberalisation include the Indonesian Revolution of 1998, the Bulldozer Revolution in Yugoslavia, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. According to Freedom House, in 2007 there were 123 electoral democracies (up from 40 in 1972). According to World Forum on Democracy, electoral democracies now represent 120 of the 192 existing countries and constitute 58.2 per cent of the world's population. At the same time liberal democracies i.e. countries Freedom House regards as free and respectful of basic human rights and the rule of law are 85 in number and represent 38 per cent of the global population. Also in 2007 the United Nations declared 15 September the International Day of Democracy. Many countries reduced their voting age to 18 years; the major democracies began to do so in the 1970s starting in Western Europe and North America. Most electoral democracies continue to exclude those younger than 18 from voting. The voting age has been lowered to 16 for national elections in a number of countries, including Brazil, Austria, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In California, a 2004 proposal to permit a quarter vote at 14 and a half vote at 16 was ultimately defeated. In 2008, the German parliament proposed but shelved a bill that would grant the vote to each citizen at birth, to be used by a parent until the child claims it for themselves. According to Freedom House, starting in 2005, there have been 17 consecutive years in which declines in political rights and civil liberties throughout the world have outnumbered improvements, as populist and nationalist political forces have gained ground everywhere from Poland (under the Law and Justice Party) to the Philippines (under Rodrigo Duterte). In a Freedom House report released in 2018, Democracy Scores for most countries declined for the 12th consecutive year. The Christian Science Monitor reported that nationalist and populist political ideologies were gaining ground, at the expense of rule of law, in countries like Poland, Turkey and Hungary. For example, in Poland, the President appointed 27 new Supreme Court judges over legal objections from the European Commission. In Turkey, thousands of judges were removed from their positions following a failed coup attempt during a government crackdown . "Democratic backsliding" in the 2010s were attributed to economic inequality and social discontent, personalism, poor government's management of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other factors such as manipulation of civil society, "toxic polarization", foreign disinformation campaigns, racism and nativism, excessive executive power, and decreased power of the opposition. Within English-speaking Western democracies, "protection-based" attitudes combining cultural conservatism and leftist economic attitudes were the strongest predictor of support for authoritarian modes of governance. Theory Early theory Aristotle contrasted rule by the many (democracy/timocracy), with rule by the few (oligarchy/aristocracy), and with rule by a single person (tyranny or today autocracy/absolute monarchy). He also thought that there was a good and a bad variant of each system (he considered democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to timocracy). A common view among early and renaissance Republican theorists was that democracy could only survive in small political communities. Heeding the lessons of the Roman Republic's shift to monarchism as it grew larger or smaller, these Republican theorists held that the expansion of territory and population inevitably led to tyranny. Democracy was therefore highly fragile and rare historically, as it could only survive in small political units, which due to their size were vulnerable to conquest by larger political units. Montesquieu famously said, "if a republic is small, it is destroyed by an outside force; if it is large, it is destroyed by an internal vice." Rousseau asserted, "It is, therefore the natural property of small states to be governed as a republic, of middling ones to be subject to a monarch, and of large empires to be swayed by a despotic prince." Contemporary theory Among modern political theorists, there are three contending conceptions of democracy: aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy, and radical democracy. Aggregative The theory of aggregative democracy claims that the aim of the democratic processes is to solicit citizens' preferences and aggregate them together to determine what social policies society should adopt. Therefore, proponents of this view hold that democratic participation should primarily focus on voting, where the policy with the most votes gets implemented. Different variants of aggregative democracy exist. Under minimalism, democracy is a system of government in which citizens have given teams of political leaders the right to rule in periodic elections. According to this minimalist conception, citizens cannot and should not "rule" because, for example, on most issues, most of the time, they have no clear views or their views are not well-founded. Joseph Schumpeter articulated this view most famously in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Contemporary proponents of minimalism include William H. Riker, Adam Przeworski, Richard Posner. According to the theory of direct democracy, on the other hand, citizens should vote directly, not through their representatives, on legislative proposals. Proponents of direct democracy offer varied reasons to support this view. Political activity can be valuable in itself, it socialises and educates citizens, and popular participation can check powerful elites. Most importantly, citizens do not rule themselves unless they directly decide laws and policies. Governments will tend to produce laws and policies that are close to the views of the median voter—with half to their left and the other half to their right. This is not a desirable outcome as it represents the action of self-interested and somewhat unaccountable political elites competing for votes. Anthony Downs suggests that ideological political parties are necessary to act as a mediating broker between individual and governments. Downs laid out this view in his 1957 book An Economic Theory of Democracy. Robert A. Dahl argues that the fundamental democratic principle is that, when it comes to binding collective decisions, each person in a political community is entitled to have his/her interests be given equal consideration (not necessarily that all people are equally satisfied by the collective decision). He uses the term polyarchy to refer to societies in which there exists a certain set of institutions and procedures which are perceived as leading to such democracy. First and foremost among these institutions is the regular occurrence of free and open elections which are used to select representatives who then manage all or most of the public policy of the society. However, these polyarchic procedures may not create a full democracy if, for example, poverty prevents political participation. Similarly, Ronald Dworkin argues that "democracy is a substantive, not a merely procedural, ideal." Deliberative Deliberative democracy is based on the notion that democracy is government by deliberation. Unlike aggregative democracy, deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Authentic deliberation is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtained through economic wealth or the support of interest groups. If the decision-makers cannot reach consensus after authentically deliberating on a proposal, then they vote on the proposal using a form of majority rule. Citizens assemblies are considered by many scholars as practical examples of deliberative democracy, with a recent OECD report identifying citizens assemblies as an increasingly popular mechanism to involve citizens in governmental decision-making. Radical Radical democracy is based on the idea that there are hierarchical and oppressive power relations that exist in society. Democracy's role is to make visible and challenge those relations by allowing for difference, dissent and antagonisms in decision-making processes. Measurement of democracy Democracy indices Difficulties in measuring democracy Types of governmental democracies Democracy has taken a number of forms, both in theory and practice. Some varieties of democracy provide better representation and more freedom for their citizens than others. However, if any democracy is not structured to prohibit the government from excluding the people from the legislative process, or any branch of government from altering the separation of powers in its favour, then a branch of the system can accumulate too much power and destroy the democracy. The following kinds of democracy are not exclusive of one another: many specify details of aspects that are independent of one another and can co-exist in a single system. Basic forms Several variants of democracy exist, but there are two basic forms, both of which concern how the whole body of all eligible citizens executes its will. One form of democracy is direct democracy, in which all eligible citizens have active participation in the political decision making, for example voting on policy initiatives directly. In most modern democracies, the whole body of eligible citizens remain the sovereign power but political power is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called a representative democracy. Direct Direct democracy is a political system where the citizens participate in the decision-making personally, contrary to relying on intermediaries or representatives. A direct democracy gives the voting population the power to: Change constitutional laws, Put forth initiatives, referendums and suggestions for laws Within modern-day representative governments, certain electoral tools like referendums, citizens' initiatives and recall elections are referred to as forms of direct democracy. However, some advocates of direct democracy argue for local assemblies of face-to-face discussion. Direct democracy as a government system currently exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities, communities affiliated with the CIPO-RFM, the Bolivian city councils of FEJUVE, and Kurdish cantons of Rojava. Semi-direct Some modern democracies that are predominantly representative in nature also heavily rely upon forms of political action that are directly democratic. These democracies, which combine elements of representative democracy and direct democracy, are termed semi-direct democracies or participatory democracies. Examples include Switzerland and some U.S. states, where frequent use is made of referendums and initiatives. The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy. At the federal level, citizens can propose changes to the constitution (federal popular initiative) or ask for a referendum to be held on any law voted by the parliament. Between January 1995 and June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times, to answer 103 questions (during the same period, French citizens participated in only two referendums). Although in the past 120 years less than 250 initiatives have been put to referendum. Examples include the extensive use of referendums in the US state of California, which is a state that has more than 20 million voters. In New England, town meetings are often used, especially in rural areas, to manage local government. This creates a hybrid form of government, with a local direct democracy and a representative state government. For example, most Vermont towns hold annual town meetings in March in which town officers are elected, budgets for the town and schools are voted on, and citizens have the opportunity to speak and be heard on political matters. Lot system The use of a lot system, a characteristic of Athenian democracy, is a feature of some versions of direct democracies. In this system, important governmental and administrative tasks are performed by citizens picked from a lottery. Representative Representative democracy involves the election of government officials by the people being represented. If the head of state is also democratically elected then it is called a democratic republic. The most common mechanisms involve election of the candidate with a majority or a plurality of the votes. Most western countries have representative systems. Representatives may be elected or become diplomatic representatives by a particular district (or constituency), or represent the entire electorate through proportional systems, with some using a combination of the two. Some representative democracies also incorporate elements of direct democracy, such as referendums. A characteristic of representative democracy is that while the representatives are elected by the people to act in the people's interest, they retain the freedom to exercise their own judgement as how best to do so. Such reasons have driven criticism upon representative democracy, pointing out the contradictions of representation mechanisms with democracy Parliamentary Parliamentary democracy is a representative democracy where government is appointed by or can be dismissed by, representatives as opposed to a "presidential rule" wherein the president is both head of state and the head of government and is elected by the voters. Under a parliamentary democracy, government is exercised by delegation to an executive ministry and subject to ongoing review, checks and balances by the legislative parliament elected by the people. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister may be dismissed by the legislature at any point in time for not meeting the expectations of the legislature. This is done through a vote of no confidence where the legislature decides whether or not to remove the prime minister from office with majority support for dismissal. In some countries, the prime minister can also call an election at any point in time, typically when the prime minister believes that they are in good favour with the public as to get re-elected. In other parliamentary democracies, extra elections are virtually never held, a minority government being preferred until the next ordinary elections. An important feature of the parliamentary democracy is the concept of the "loyal opposition". The essence of the concept is that the second largest political party (or opposition) opposes the governing party (or coalition), while still remaining loyal to the state and its democratic principles. Presidential Presidential democracy is a system where the public elects the president through an election. The president serves as both the head of state and head of government controlling most of the executive powers. The president serves for a specific term and cannot exceed that amount of time. The legislature often has limited ability to remove a president from office. Elections typically have a fixed date and aren't easily changed. The president has direct control over the cabinet, specifically appointing the cabinet members. The executive usually has the responsibility to execute or implement legislation and may have the limited legislative powers, such as a veto. However, a legislative branch passes legislation and budgets. This provides some measure of separation of powers. In consequence, however, the president and the legislature may end up in the control of separate parties, allowing one to block the other and thereby interfere with the orderly operation of the state. This may be the reason why presidential democracy is not very common outside the Americas, Africa, and Central and Southeast Asia. A semi-presidential system is a system of democracy in which the government includes both a prime minister and a president. The particular powers held by the prime minister and president vary by country. Typology Constitutional monarchy Many countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavian countries, Thailand, Japan and Bhutan turned powerful monarchs into constitutional monarchs (often gradually) with limited or symbolic roles. For example, in the predecessor states to the United Kingdom, constitutional monarchy began to emerge and has continued uninterrupted since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and passage of the Bill of Rights 1689. Strongly limited constitutional monarchies, such as the United Kingdom, have been referred to as crowned republics by writers such as H. G. Wells. In other countries, the monarchy was abolished along with the aristocratic system (as in France, China, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Greece, and Egypt). An elected person, with or without significant powers, became the head of state in these countries. Elite upper houses of legislatures, which often had lifetime or hereditary tenure, were common in many states. Over time, these either had their powers limited (as with the British House of Lords) or else became elective and remained powerful (as with the Australian Senate). Republic The term republic has many different meanings, but today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister. The Founding Fathers of the United States often criticised direct democracy, which in their view often came without the protection of a constitution enshrining inalienable rights; James Madison argued, especially in The Federalist No. 10, that what distinguished a direct democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combats faction by its very structure. Professors Richard Ellis of Willamette University and Michael Nelson of Rhodes College argue that much constitutional thought, from Madison to Lincoln and beyond, has focused on "the problem of majority tyranny". They conclude, "The principles of republican government embedded in the Constitution represent an effort by the framers to ensure that the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would not be trampled by majorities." What was critical to American values, John Adams insisted, was that the government be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." As Benjamin Franklin was exiting after writing the US Constitution, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked him "Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?". He replied "A republic—if you can keep it." Liberal A liberal democracy is a representative democracy which enshrines a liberal political philosophy, where the ability of the elected representatives to exercise decision-making power is subject to the rule of law, moderated by a constitution or laws that such as the protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals, and constrained on the extent to which the will of the majority can be exercised against the rights of minorities. Socialist Socialist thought has several different views on democracy. Social democracy, democratic socialism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat are some examples. Many democratic socialists and social democrats believe in a form of participatory, industrial, economic and/or workplace democracy combined with a representative democracy. Trotskyist groups have interpreted socialist democracy to be synonymous with multi-party socialist representation, autonomous union organizations, worker's control of production, internal party democracy and the mass participation of the working masses. Marxist Within Marxist orthodoxy there is a hostility to what is commonly called "liberal democracy", which is referred to as parliamentary democracy because of its centralised nature. Because of orthodox Marxists' desire to eliminate the political elitism they see in capitalism, Marxists, Leninists, and Trotskyists believe in direct democracy implemented through a system of communes (which are sometimes called soviets). This system can begin with workplace democracy and ultimately manifests itself as council democracy. Anarchist Anarchists are split in this domain, depending on whether they believe that a majority-rule is tyrannic or not. To many anarchists, the only form of democracy considered acceptable is direct democracy. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued that the only acceptable form of direct democracy is one in which it is recognised that majority decisions are not binding on the minority, even when unanimous. However, anarcho-communist Murray Bookchin criticised individualist anarchists for opposing democracy, and says "majority rule" is consistent with anarchism. Some anarcho-communists oppose the majoritarian nature of direct democracy, feeling that it can impede individual liberty and opt-in favour of a non-majoritarian form of consensus democracy, similar to Proudhon's position on direct democracy. Sortition Sortition is the process of choosing decision-making bodies via a random selection. These bodies can be more representative of the opinions and interests of the people at large than an elected legislature or other decision-maker. The technique was in widespread use in Athenian Democracy and Renaissance Florence and is still used in modern jury selection and citizens' assemblies. Consociational Consociational democracy, also called consociationalism, is a form of democracy based on power-sharing formula between elites representing the social groups within the society. In 1969, Arendt Lijphart argued this would stabilize democracies with factions. A consociational democracy allows for simultaneous majority votes in two or more ethno-religious constituencies, and policies are enacted only if they gain majority support from both or all of them. The Qualified majority voting rule in European Council of Ministers is a consociational democracy approach for supranational democracies. This system in Treaty of Rome allocates votes to member states in part according to their population, but heavily weighted in favour of the smaller states. A consociational democracy requires consensus of representatives, while consensus democracy requires consensus of electorate. Consensus Consensus democracy requires consensus decision-making and supermajority to obtain a larger support than majority. In contrast, in majoritarian democracy minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote-winning majorities. Constitutions typically require consensus or supermajorities. Ethnic Inclusive Inclusive democracy is a political theory and political project that aims for direct democracy in all fields of social life: political democracy in the form of face-to-face assemblies which are confederated, economic democracy in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy, democracy in the social realm, i.e. self-management in places of work and education, and ecological democracy which aims to reintegrate society and nature. The theoretical project of inclusive democracy emerged from the work of political philosopher Takis Fotopoulos in "Towards An Inclusive Democracy" and was further developed in the journal Democracy & Nature and its successor The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. Participatory A parpolity or participatory polity is a theoretical form of democracy that is ruled by a nested council structure. The guiding philosophy is that people should have decision-making power in proportion to how much they are affected by the decision. Local councils of 25–50 people are completely autonomous on issues that affect only them, and these councils send delegates to higher level councils who are again autonomous regarding issues that affect only the population affected by that council. A council court of randomly chosen citizens serves as a check on the tyranny of the majority, and rules on which body gets to vote on which issue. Delegates may vote differently from how their sending council might wish but are mandated to communicate the wishes of their sending council. Delegates are recallable at any time. Referendums are possible at any time via votes of lower-level councils, however, not everything is a referendum as this is most likely a waste of time. A parpolity is meant to work in tandem with a participatory economy. Religious Cosmopolitan Cosmopolitan democracy, also known as global democracy or world federalism, is a political system in which democracy is implemented on a global scale, either directly or through representatives. An important justification for this kind of system is that the decisions made in national or regional democracies often affect people outside the constituency who, by definition, cannot vote. By contrast, in a cosmopolitan democracy, the people who are affected by decisions also have a say in them. According to its supporters, any attempt to solve global problems is undemocratic without some form of cosmopolitan democracy. The general principle of cosmopolitan democracy is to expand some or all of the values and norms of democracy, including the rule of law; the non-violent resolution of conflicts; and equality among citizens, beyond the limits of the state. To be fully implemented, this would require reforming existing international organisations, e.g., the United Nations, as well as the creation of new institutions such as a World Parliament, which ideally would enhance public control over, and accountability in, international politics. Cosmopolitan democracy has been promoted, among others, by physicist Albert Einstein, writer Kurt Vonnegut, columnist George Monbiot, and professors David Held and Daniele Archibugi. The creation of the International Criminal Court in 2003 was seen as a major step forward by many supporters of this type of cosmopolitan democracy. Creative Creative democracy is advocated by American philosopher John Dewey. The main idea about creative democracy is that democracy encourages individual capacity building and the interaction among the society. Dewey argues that democracy is a way of life in his work of "Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us" and an experience built on faith in human nature, faith in human beings, and faith in working with others. Democracy, in Dewey's view, is a moral ideal requiring actual effort and work by people; it is not an institutional concept that exists outside of ourselves. "The task of democracy", Dewey concludes, "is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute". Guided Guided democracy is a form of democracy that incorporates regular popular elections, but which often carefully "guides" the choices offered to the electorate in a manner that may reduce the ability of the electorate to truly determine the type of government exercised over them. Such democracies typically have only one central authority which is often not subject to meaningful public review by any other governmental authority. Russian-style democracy has often been referred to as a "guided democracy". Russian politicians have referred to their government as having only one center of power/ authority, as opposed to most other forms of democracy which usually attempt to incorporate two or more naturally competing sources of authority within the same government. Non-governmental democracy Aside from the public sphere, similar democratic principles and mechanisms of voting and representation have been used to govern other kinds of groups. Many non-governmental organisations decide policy and leadership by voting. Most trade unions and cooperatives are governed by democratic elections. Corporations are ultimately governed by their shareholders through shareholder democracy. Corporations may also employ systems such as workplace democracy to handle internal governance. Amitai Etzioni has postulated a system that fuses elements of democracy with sharia law, termed Islamocracy. There is also a growing number of Democratic educational institutions such as Sudbury schools that are co-governed by students and staff. Shareholder democracy Shareholder democracy is a concept relating to the governance of corporations by their shareholders. In the United States, shareholders are typically granted voting rights according to the one share, one vote principle. Shareholders may vote annually to elect the company's board of directors, who themselves may choose the company's executives. The shareholder democracy framework may be inaccurate for companies which have different classes of stock that further alter the distribution of voting rights. Justification Several justifications for democracy have been postulated. Legitimacy Social contract theory argues that the legitimacy of government is based on consent of the governed, i.e. an election, and that political decisions must reflect the general will. Some proponents of the theory like Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocate for a direct democracy on this basis. Better decision-making Condorcet's jury theorem is logical proof that if each decision-maker has a better than chance probability of making the right decision, then having the largest number of decision-makers, i.e. a democracy, will result in the best decisions. This has also been argued by theories of the wisdom of the crowd. Democracy tends to improve conflict resolution. Economic success In Why Nations Fail, economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that democracies are more economically successful because undemocratic political systems tend to limit markets and favor monopolies at the expense of the creative destruction which is necessary for sustained economic growth. A 2019 study by Acemoglu and others estimated that countries switching to democratic from authoritarian rule had on average a 20% higher GDP after 25 years than if they had remained authoritarian. The study examined 122 transitions to democracy and 71 transitions to authoritarian rule, occurring from 1960 to 2010. Acemoglu said this was because democracies tended to invest more in health care and human capital, and reduce special treatment of regime allies. A 2023 study analyzed the long-term effects of democracy on economic prosperity using new data on GDP per capita and democracy for a dataset between 1789 and 2019. The results indicate that democracy substantially increases economic development. Democracy promotion Democracy promotion can increase the quality of already existing democracies, reduce political apathy, and the chance of democratic backsliding. Democracy promotion measures include voting advice applications, participatory democracy, increasing youth suffrage, increasing civic education, reducing barriers to entry for new political parties, increasing proportionality and reducing presidentialism. Democratic transitions A democratic transition describes a phase in a countries political system, often created as a result of an incomplete change from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one (or vice versa). Democratization Several philosophers and researchers have outlined historical and social factors seen as supporting the evolution of democracy. Other commentators have mentioned the influence of economic development. In a related theory, Ronald Inglehart suggests that improved living-standards in modern developed countries can convince people that they can take their basic survival for granted, leading to increased emphasis on self-expression values, which correlates closely with democracy. Douglas M. Gibler and Andrew Owsiak in their study argued about the importance of peace and stable borders for the development of democracy. It has often been assumed that democracy causes peace, but this study shows that, historically, peace has almost always predated the establishment of democracy. Carroll Quigley concludes that the characteristics of weapons are the main predictor of democracy: Democracy—this scenario—tends to emerge only when the best weapons available are easy for individuals to obtain and use. By the 1800s, guns were the best personal weapons available, and in the United States of America (already nominally democratic), almost everyone could afford to buy a gun, and could learn how to use it fairly easily. Governments could not do any better: it became the age of mass armies of citizen soldiers with guns. Similarly, Periclean Greece was an age of the citizen soldier and democracy. Other theories stressed the relevance of education and of human capital—and within them of cognitive ability to increasing tolerance, rationality, political literacy and participation. Two effects of education and cognitive ability are distinguished: a cognitive effect (competence to make rational choices, better information-processing) an ethical effect (support of democratic values, freedom, human rights etc.), which itself depends on intelligence. Evidence consistent with conventional theories of why democracy emerges and is sustained has been hard to come by. Statistical analyses have challenged modernisation theory by demonstrating that there is no reliable evidence for the claim that democracy is more likely to emerge when countries become wealthier, more educated, or less unequal. In fact, empirical evidence shows that economic growth and education may not lead to increased demand for democratization as modernization theory suggests: historically, most countries attained high levels of access to primary education well before transitioning to democracy. Rather than acting as a catalyst for democratization, in some situations education provision may instead be used by non-democratic regimes to indoctrinate their subjects and strengthen their power. The assumed link between education and economic growth is called into question when analyzing empirical evidence. Across different countries, the correlation between education attainment and math test scores is very weak (.07). A similarly weak relationship exists between per-pupil expenditures and math competency (.26). Additionally, historical evidence suggests that average human capital (measured using literacy rates) of the masses does not explain the onset of industrialization in France from 1750 to 1850 despite arguments to the contrary. Together, these findings show that education does not always promote human capital and economic growth as is generally argued to be the case. Instead, the evidence implies that education provision often falls short of its expressed goals, or, alternatively, that political actors use education to promote goals other than economic growth and development. Some scholars have searched for the "deep" determinants of contemporary political institutions, be they geographical or demographic. An example of this is the disease environment. Places with different mortality rates had different populations and productivity levels around the world. For example, in Africa, the tsetse fly—which afflicts humans and livestock—reduced the ability of Africans to plough the land. This made Africa less settled. As a consequence, political power was less concentrated. This also affected the colonial institutions European countries established in Africa. Whether colonial settlers could live or not in a place made them develop different institutions which led to different economic and social paths. This also affected the distribution of power and the collective actions people could take. As a result, some African countries ended up having democracies and others autocracies. An example of geographical determinants for democracy is having access to coastal areas and rivers. This natural endowment has a positive relation with economic development thanks to the benefits of trade. Trade brought economic development, which in turn, broadened power. Rulers wanting to increase revenues had to protect property-rights to create incentives for people to invest. As more people had more power, more concessions had to be made by the ruler and in many places this process lead to democracy. These determinants defined the structure of the society moving the balance of political power. Robert Michels asserts that although democracy can never be fully realised, democracy may be developed automatically in the act of striving for democracy: The peasant in the fable, when on his deathbed, tells his sons that a treasure is buried in the field. After the old man's death the sons dig everywhere in order to discover the treasure. They do not find it. But their indefatigable labor improves the soil and secures for them a comparative well-being. The treasure in the fable may well symbolise democracy. Democracy in modern times has almost always faced opposition from the previously existing government, and many times it has faced opposition from social elites. The implementation of a democratic government from a non-democratic state is typically brought by peaceful or violent democratic revolution. Autocratization Disruption Some democratic governments have experienced sudden state collapse and regime change to an undemocratic form of government. Domestic military coups or rebellions are the most common means by which democratic governments have been overthrown. (See List of coups and coup attempts by country and List of civil wars.) Examples include the Spanish Civil War, the Coup of 18 Brumaire that ended the French First Republic, and the 28 May 1926 coup d'état which ended the First Portuguese Republic. Some military coups are supported by foreign governments, such as the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1953 Iranian coup d'état. Other types of a sudden end to democracy include: Invasion, for example the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the fall of South Vietnam. Self-coup, in which the leader of the government extra-legally seizes all power or unlawfully extends the term in office. This can be done through: Suspension of the constitution by decree, such as with the 1992 Peruvian coup d'état An "electoral self-coup" using election fraud to obtain re-election of a previously fairly elected official or political party. For example, in the 1999 Ukrainian presidential election, 2003 Russian legislative election, and 2004 Russian presidential election. Royal coup, in which a monarch not normally involved in government seizes all power. For example, the 6 January Dictatorship, begun in 1929 when King Alexander I of Yugoslavia dismissed parliament and started ruling by decree. Democratic backsliding can end democracy in a gradual manner, by increasing emphasis on national security and eroding free and fair elections, freedom of expression, independence of the judiciary, rule of law. A famous example is the Enabling Act of 1933, which lawfully ended democracy in Weimar Germany and marked the transition to Nazi Germany. Temporary or long-term political violence and government interference can prevent free and fair elections, which erode the democratic nature of governments. This has happened on a local level even in well-established democracies like the United States; for example, the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 and African-American disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era. Debates on democracy Importance of mass media The theory of democracy relies on the implicit assumption that voters are well informed about social issues, policies, and candidates so that they can make a truly informed decision. Since the late 20'th century there has been a growing concern that voters may be poorly informed because the news media are focusing more on entertainment and gossip and less on serious journalistic research on political issues. The media professors Michael Gurevitch and Jay Blumler have proposed a number of functions that the mass media are expected to fulfill in a democracy: Surveillance of the sociopolitical environment Meaningful agenda setting Platforms for an intelligible and illuminating advocacy Dialogue across a diverse range of views Mechanisms for holding officials to account for how they have exercised power Incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved A principled resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence, integrity, and ability to serve the audience A sense of respect for the audience member, as potentially concerned and able to make sense of his or her political environment This proposal has inspired a lot of discussions over whether the news media are actually fulfilling the requirements that a well functioning democracy requires. Commercial mass media are generally not accountable to anybody but their owners, and they have no obligation to serve a democratic function. They are controlled mainly by economic market forces. Fierce economic competition may force the mass media to divert themselves from any democratic ideals and focus entirely on how to survive the competition. The tabloidization and popularization of the news media is seen in an increasing focus on human examples rather than statistics and principles. There is more focus on politicians as personalities and less focus on political issues in the popular media. Election campaigns are covered more as horse races and less as debates about ideologies and issues. The dominating media focus on spin, conflict, and competitive strategies has made voters perceive the politicians as egoists rather than idealists. This fosters mistrust and a cynical attitude to politics, less civic engagement, and less interest in voting. The ability to find effective political solutions to social problems is hampered when problems tend to be blamed on individuals rather than on structural causes. This person-centered focus may have far-reaching consequences not only for domestic problems but also for foreign policy when international conflicts are blamed on foreign heads of state rather than on political and economic structures. A strong media focus on fear and terrorism has allowed military logic to penetrate public institutions, leading to increased surveillance and the erosion of civil rights. The responsiveness and accountability of the democratic system is compromised when lack of access to substantive, diverse, and undistorted information is handicapping the citizens' capability of evaluating the political process. The fast pace and trivialization in the competitive news media is dumbing down the political debate. Thorough and balanced investigation of complex political issues does not fit into this format. The political communication is characterized by short time horizons, short slogans, simple explanations, and simple solutions. This is conducive to political populism rather than serious deliberation. Commercial mass media are often differentiated along the political spectrum so that people can hear mainly opinions that they already agree with. Too much controversy and diverse opinions are not always profitable for the commercial news media. Political polarization is emerging when different people read different news and watch different TV channels. This polarization has been worsened by the emergence of the social media that allow people to communicate mainly with groups of like-minded people, the so-called echo chambers. Extreme political polarization may undermine the trust in democratic institutions, leading to erosion of civil rights and free speech and in some cases even reversion to autocracy. Many media scholars have discussed non-commercial news media with public service obligations as a means to improve the democratic process by providing the kind of political contents that a free market does not provide. The World Bank has recommended public service broadcasting in order to strengthen democracy in developing countries. These broadcasting services should be accountable to an independent regulatory body that is adequately protected from interference from political and economic interests. Public service media have an obligation to provide reliable information to voters. Many countries have publicly funded radio and television stations with public service obligations, especially in Europe and Japan, while such media are weak or non-existent in other countries including the US. Several studies have shown that the stronger the dominance of commercial broadcast media over public service media, the less the amount of policy-relevant information in the media and the more focus on horse race journalism, personalities, and the pecadillos of politicians. Public service broadcasters are characterized by more policy-relevant information and more respect for journalistic norms and impartiality than the commercial media. However, the trend of deregulation has put the public service model under increased pressure from competition with commercial media. The emergence of the internet and the social media has profoundly altered the conditions for political communication. The social media have given ordinary citizens easy access to voice their opinion and share information while bypassing the filters of the large news media. This is often seen as an advantage for democracy. The new possibilities for communication have fundamentally changed the way social movements and protest movements operate and organize. The internet and social media have provided powerful new tools for democracy movements in developing countries and emerging democracies, enabling them to bypass censorship, voice their opinions, and organize protests. A serious problem with the social media is that they have no truth filters. The established news media have to guard their reputation as trustworthy, while ordinary citizens may post unreliable information. In fact, studies show that false stories are going more viral than true stories. The proliferation of false stories and conspiracy theories may undermine public trust in the political system and public officials. Reliable information sources are essential for the democratic process. Less democratic governments rely heavily on censorship, propaganda, and misinformation in order to stay in power, while independent sources of information are able to undermine their legitimacy. See also Footnotes References Works cited Further reading Cartledge, Paul (2016). Democracy: A Life. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199697670. Biagini, Eugenio (general editor). 2021. A Cultural History of Democracy, 6 Volumes New York : Bloomsbury Academic. Przeworski, Adam (2018) Why Bother With Elections? Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Munck, Gerardo L. (2016) "What is Democracy? A Reconceptualization of the Quality of Democracy". Democratization 23(1): 1–26. External links Democracy at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Podcast: Democracy Paradox, hundreds of interviews with democracy experts around the world Classical Greece Elections Types of democracy

Autonomy

In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a (relatively high) level of discretion granted to an employee in his or her work. In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase job satisfaction. Self-actualized individuals are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations. In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine. Sociology In the sociology of knowledge, a controversy over the boundaries of autonomy inhibited analysis of any concept beyond relative autonomy, until a typology of autonomy was created and developed within science and technology studies[citation needed]. According to it, the institution of science's existing autonomy is "reflexive autonomy": actors and structures within the scientific field are able to translate or to reflect diverse themes presented by social and political fields, as well as influence them regarding the thematic choices on research projects. Institutional autonomy Institutional autonomy is having the capacity as a legislator to be able to implant and pursue official goals. Autonomous institutions are responsible for finding sufficient resources or modifying their plans, programs, courses, responsibilities, and services accordingly. But in doing so, they must contend with any obstacles that can occur, such as social pressure against cut-backs or socioeconomic difficulties. From a legislator's point of view, to increase institutional autonomy, conditions of self-management and institutional self-governance must be put in place. An increase in leadership and a redistribution of decision-making responsibilities would be beneficial to the research of resources. Institutional autonomy was often seen as a synonym for self-determination, and many governments feared that it would lead institutions to an irredentist or secessionist region. But autonomy should be seen as a solution to self-determination struggles. Self-determination is a movement toward independence, whereas autonomy is a way to accommodate the distinct regions/groups within a country. Institutional autonomy can diffuse conflicts regarding minorities and ethnic groups in a society. Allowing more autonomy to groups and institutions helps create diplomatic relationships between them and the central government. Politics In governmental parlance, autonomy refers to self-governance. An example of an autonomous jurisdiction was the former United States governance of the Philippine Islands. The Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916 provided the framework for the creation of an autonomous government under which the Filipino people had broader domestic autonomy than previously, although it reserved certain privileges to the United States to protect its sovereign rights and interests. Other examples include Kosovo (as the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo) under the former Yugoslav government of Marshal Tito and Puntland Autonomous Region within Federal Republic of Somalia. Although often being territorially defined as self-governments, autonomous self-governing institutions may take a non-territorial form. Such non-territorial solutions are, for example, cultural autonomy in Estonia and Hungary, national minority councils in Serbia or Sámi parliaments in Nordic countries. Philosophy Autonomy is a key concept that has a broad impact on different fields of philosophy. In metaphysical philosophy, the concept of autonomy is referenced in discussions about free will, fatalism, determinism, and agency. In moral philosophy, autonomy refers to subjecting oneself to objective moral law. According to Kant Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) defined autonomy by three themes regarding contemporary ethics. Firstly, autonomy as the right for one to make their own decisions excluding any interference from others. Secondly, autonomy as the capacity to make such decisions through one's own independence of mind and after personal reflection. Thirdly, as an ideal way of living life autonomously. In summary, autonomy is the moral right one possesses, or the capacity we have in order to think and make decisions for oneself providing some degree of control or power over the events that unfold within one's everyday life. The context in which Kant addresses autonomy is in regards to moral theory, asking both foundational and abstract questions. He believed that in order for there to be morality, there must be autonomy. "Autonomous" is derived from the Greek word autonomos where 'auto' means self and 'nomos' means to govern (nomos: as can be seen in its usage in nomárchēs which means chief of the province). Kantian autonomy also provides a sense of rational autonomy, simply meaning one rationally possesses the motivation to govern their own life. Rational autonomy entails making your own decisions but it cannot be done solely in isolation. Cooperative rational interactions are required to both develop and exercise our ability to live in a world with others. Kant argued that morality presupposes this autonomy in moral agents, since moral requirements are expressed in categorical imperatives. An imperative is categorical if it issues a valid command independent of personal desires or interests that would provide a reason for obeying the command. It is hypothetical if the validity of its command, if the reason why one can be expected to obey it, is the fact that one desires or is interested in something further that obedience to the command would entail. "Don't speed on the freeway if you don't want to be stopped by the police" is a hypothetical imperative. "It is wrong to break the law, so don't speed on the freeway" is a categorical imperative. The hypothetical command not to speed on the freeway is not valid for you if you do not care whether you are stopped by the police. The categorical command is valid for you either way. Autonomous moral agents can be expected to obey the command of a categorical imperative even if they lack a personal desire or interest in doing so. It remains an open question whether they will, however. The Kantian concept of autonomy is often misconstrued, leaving out the important point about the autonomous agent's self-subjection to the moral law. It is thought that autonomy is fully explained as the ability to obey a categorical command independently of a personal desire or interest in doing so—or worse, that autonomy is "obeying" a categorical command independently of a natural desire or interest; and that heteronomy, its opposite, is acting instead on personal motives of the kind referenced in hypothetical imperatives. In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant applied the concept of autonomy also to define the concept of personhood and human dignity. Autonomy, along with rationality, are seen by Kant as the two criteria for a meaningful life. Kant would consider a life lived without these not worth living; it would be a life of value equal to that of a plant or insect. According to Kant autonomy is part of the reason that we hold others morally accountable for their actions. Human actions are morally praise- or blame-worthy in virtue of our autonomy. Non- autonomous beings such as plants or animals are not blameworthy due to their actions being non-autonomous. Kant's position on crime and punishment is influenced by his views on autonomy. Brainwashing or drugging criminals into being law-abiding citizens would be immoral as it would not be respecting their autonomy. Rehabilitation must be sought in a way that respects their autonomy and dignity as human beings. According to Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about autonomy and the moral fight. Autonomy in this sense is referred to as the free self and entails several aspects of the self, including self-respect and even self-love. This can be interpreted as influenced by Kant (self-respect) and Aristotle (self-love). For Nietzsche, valuing ethical autonomy can dissolve the conflict between love (self-love) and law (self-respect) which can then translate into reality through experiences of being self-responsible. Because Nietzsche defines having a sense of freedom with being responsible for one's own life, freedom and self-responsibility can be very much linked to autonomy. According to Piaget The Swiss philosopher Jean Piaget (1896–1980) believed that autonomy comes from within and results from a "free decision". It is of intrinsic value and the morality of autonomy is not only accepted but obligatory. When an attempt at social interchange occurs, it is reciprocal, ideal and natural for there to be autonomy regardless of why the collaboration with others has taken place. For Piaget, the term autonomous can be used to explain the idea that rules are self-chosen. By choosing which rules to follow or not, we are in turn determining our own behaviour. Piaget studied the cognitive development of children by analyzing them during their games and through interviews, establishing (among other principles) that the children's moral maturation process occurred in two phases, the first of heteronomy and the second of autonomy: Heteronomous reasoning: Rules are objective and unchanging. They must be literal because the authority are ordering it and do not fit exceptions or discussions. The base of the rule is the superior authority (parents, adults, the State), that it should not give reason for the rules imposed or fulfilled them in any case. Duties provided are conceived as given from oneself. Any moral motivation and sentiments are possible through what one believes to be right. Autonomous reasoning: Rules are the product of an agreement and, therefore, are modifiable. They can be subject to interpretation and fit exceptions and objections. The base of the rule is its own acceptance, and its meaning has to be explained. Sanctions must be proportionate to the absence, assuming that sometimes offenses can go unpunished, so that collective punishment is unacceptable if it is not the guilty. The circumstances may not punish a guilty. Duties provided are conceived as given from the outside. One follows rules mechanically as it is simply a rule, or as a way to avoid a form of punishment. According to Kohlberg The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) continues the studies of Piaget. His studies collected information from different latitudes to eliminate the cultural variability, and focused on the moral reasoning, and not so much in the behavior or its consequences. Through interviews with adolescent and teenage boys, who were to try and solve "moral dilemmas", Kohlberg went on to further develop the stages of moral development. The answers they provided could be one of two things. Either they choose to obey a given law, authority figure or rule of some sort or they chose to take actions that would serve a human need but in turn break this given rule or command. The most popular moral dilemma asked involved the wife of a man approaching death due to a special type of cancer. Because the drug was too expensive to obtain on his own, and because the pharmacist who discovered and sold the drug had no compassion for him and only wanted profits, he stole it. Kohlberg asks these adolescent and teenage boys (10-, 13- and 16-year-olds) if they think that is what the husband should have done or not. Therefore, depending on their decisions, they provided answers to Kohlberg about deeper rationales and thoughts and determined what they value as important. This value then determined the "structure" of their moral reasoning. Kohlberg established three stages of morality, each of which is subdivided into two levels. They are read in progressive sense, that is, higher levels indicate greater autonomy. Level 1: Premoral/Preconventional Morality: Standards are met (or not met) depending on the hedonistic or physical consequences. [Stage 0: Egocentric Judgment: There is no moral concept independent of individual wishes, including a lack of concept of rules or obligations.] Stage 1: Punishment-Obedience Orientation: The rule is obeyed only to avoid punishment. Physical consequences determine goodness or badness and power is deferred to unquestioningly with no respect for the human or moral value, or the meaning of these consequences. Concern is for the self. Stage 2: Instrumental-Relativist Orientation: Morals are individualistic and egocentric. There is an exchange of interests but always under the point of view of satisfying personal needs. Elements of fairness and reciprocity are present but these are interpreted in a pragmatic way, instead of an experience of gratitude or justice. Egocentric in nature but beginning to incorporate the ability to see things from the perspective of others. Level 2: Conventional Morality/Role Conformity: Rules are obeyed according to the established conventions of a society. Stage 3: Good Boy–Nice Girl Orientation: Morals are conceived in accordance with the stereotypical social role. Rules are obeyed to obtain the approval of the immediate group and the right actions are judged based on what would please others or give the impression that one is a good person. Actions are evaluated according to intentions. Stage 4: Law and Order Orientation: Morals are judged in accordance with the authority of the system, or the needs of the social order. Laws and order are prioritized. Level 3: Postconventional Morality/Self-Accepted Moral Principles: Standards of moral behavior are internalized. Morals are governed by rational judgment, derived from a conscious reflection on the recognition of the value of the individual inside a conventionally established society. Stage 5: Social Contract Orientation: There are individual rights and standards that have been lawfully established as basic universal values. Rules are agreed upon by through procedure and society comes to consensus through critical examination in order to benefit the greater good. Stage 6: Universal Principle Orientation: Abstract ethical principles are obeyed on a personal level in addition to societal rules and conventions. Universal principles of justice, reciprocity, equality and human dignity are internalized and if one fails to live up to these ideals, guilt or self-condemnation results. According to Audi Robert Audi characterizes autonomy as the self-governing power to bring reasons to bear in directing one's conduct and influencing one's propositional attitudes. Traditionally, autonomy is only concerned with practical matters. But, as Audi's definition suggests, autonomy may be applied to responding to reasons at large, not just to practical reasons. Autonomy is closely related to freedom but the two can come apart. An example would be a political prisoner who is forced to make a statement in favor of his opponents in order to ensure that his loved ones are not harmed. As Audi points out, the prisoner lacks freedom but still has autonomy since his statement, though not reflecting his political ideals, is still an expression of his commitment to his loved ones. Autonomy is often equated with self-legislation in the Kantian tradition. Self-legislation may be interpreted as laying down laws or principles that are to be followed. Audi agrees with this school in the sense that we should bring reasons to bear in a principled way. Responding to reasons by mere whim may still be considered free but not autonomous. A commitment to principles and projects, on the other hand, provides autonomous agents with an identity over time and gives them a sense of the kind of persons they want to be. But autonomy is neutral as to which principles or projects the agent endorses. So different autonomous agents may follow very different principles. But, as Audi points out, self-legislation is not sufficient for autonomy since laws that do not have any practical impact do not constitute autonomy. Some form of motivational force or executive power is necessary in order to get from mere self-legislation to self-government. This motivation may be inherent in the corresponding practical judgment itself, a position known as motivational internalism, or may come to the practical judgment externally in the form of some desire independent of the judgment, as motivational externalism holds. In the Humean tradition, intrinsic desires are the reasons the autonomous agent should respond to. This theory is called instrumentalism. Audi rejects instrumentalism and suggests that we should adopt a position known as axiological objectivism. The central idea of this outlook is that objective values, and not subjective desires, are the sources of normativity and therefore determine what autonomous agents should do. Child development Autonomy in childhood and adolescence is when one strives to gain a sense of oneself as a separate, self-governing individual. Between ages 1–3, during the second stage of Erikson's and Freud's stages of development, the psychosocial crisis that occurs is autonomy versus shame and doubt. The significant event that occurs during this stage is that children must learn to be autonomous, and failure to do so may lead to the child doubting their own abilities and feel ashamed. When a child becomes autonomous it allows them to explore and acquire new skills. Autonomy has two vital aspects wherein there is an emotional component where one relies more on themselves rather than their parents and a behavioural component where one makes decisions independently by using their judgement. The styles of child rearing affect the development of a child's autonomy. Autonomy in adolescence is closely related to their quest for identity. In adolescence parents and peers act as agents of influence. Peer influence in early adolescence may help the process of an adolescent to gradually become more autonomous by being less susceptible to parental or peer influence as they get older. In adolescence the most important developmental task is to develop a healthy sense of autonomy. Religion In Christianity, autonomy is manifested as a partial self-governance on various levels of church administration. During the history of Christianity, there were two basic types of autonomy. Some important parishes and monasteries have been given special autonomous rights and privileges, and the best known example of monastic autonomy is the famous Eastern Orthodox monastic community on Mount Athos in Greece. On the other hand, administrative autonomy of entire ecclesiastical provinces has throughout history included various degrees of internal self-governance. In ecclesiology of Eastern Orthodox Churches, there is a clear distinction between autonomy and autocephaly, since autocephalous churches have full self-governance and independence, while every autonomous church is subject to some autocephalous church, having a certain degree of internal self-governance. Since every autonomous church had its own historical path to ecclesiastical autonomy, there are significant differences between various autonomous churches in respect of their particular degrees of self-governance. For example, churches that are autonomous can have their highest-ranking bishops, such as an archbishop or metropolitan, appointed or confirmed by the patriarch of the mother church from which it was granted its autonomy, but generally they remain self-governing in many other respects. In the history of Western Christianity the question of ecclesiastical autonomy was also one of the most important questions, especially during the first centuries of Christianity, since various archbishops and metropolitans in Western Europe have often opposed centralizing tendencies of the Church of Rome. , the Catholic Church comprises 24 autonomous (sui iuris) Churches in communion with the Holy See. Various denominations of Protestant churches usually have more decentralized power, and churches may be autonomous, thus having their own rules or laws of government, at the national, local, or even individual level. Sartre brings the concept of the Cartesian god being totally free and autonomous. He states that existence precedes essence with god being the creator of the essences, eternal truths and divine will. This pure freedom of god relates to human freedom and autonomy; where a human is not subjected to pre-existing ideas and values. According to the first amendment, In the United States of America, the federal government is restricted in building a national church. This is due to the first amendment's recognizing people's freedom's to worship their faith according to their own belief's. For example, the American government has removed the church from their "sphere of authority" due to the churches' historical impact on politics and their authority on the public. This was the beginning of the disestablishment process. The Protestant churches in the United States had a significant impact on American culture in the nineteenth century, when they organized the establishment of schools, hospitals, orphanages, colleges, magazines, and so forth. This has brought up the famous, however, misinterpreted term of the separation of church and state. These churches lost the legislative and financial support from the state. The disestablishment process The first disestablishment began with the introduction of the bill of rights. In the twentieth century, due to the great depression of the 1930s and the completion of the second world war, the American churches were revived. Specifically the Protestant churches. This was the beginning of the second disestablishment when churches had become popular again but held no legislative power. One of the reasons why the churches gained attendance and popularity was due to the baby boom, when soldiers came back from the second world war and started their families. The large influx of newborns gave the churches a new wave of followers. However, these followers did not hold the same beliefs as their parents and brought about the political, and religious revolutions of the 1960s. During the 1960s, the collapse of religious and cultural middle brought upon the third disestablishment. Religion became more important to the individual and less so to the community. The changes brought from these revolutions significantly increased the personal autonomy of individuals due to the lack of structural restraints giving them added freedom of choice. This concept is known as "new voluntarism" where individuals have free choice on how to be religious and the free choice whether to be religious or not. Medicine In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine. Autonomy can be defined as the ability of the person to make his or her own decisions. This faith in autonomy is the central premise of the concept of informed consent and shared decision making. This idea, while considered essential to today's practice of medicine, was developed in the last 50 years. According to Tom Beauchamp and James Childress (in Principles of Biomedical Ethics), the Nuremberg trials detailed accounts of horrifyingly exploitative medical "experiments" which violated the subjects' physical integrity and personal autonomy. These incidences prompted calls for safeguards in medical research, such as the Nuremberg Code which stressed the importance of voluntary participation in medical research. It is believed that the Nuremberg Code served as the premise for many current documents regarding research ethics. Respect for autonomy became incorporated in health care and patients could be allowed to make personal decisions about the health care services that they receive. Notably, autonomy has several aspects as well as challenges that affect health care operations. The manner in which a patient is handled may undermine or support the autonomy of a patient and for this reason, the way a patient is communicated to becomes very crucial. A good relationship between a patient and a health care practitioner needs to be well defined to ensure that autonomy of a patient is respected. Just like in any other life situation, a patient would not like to be under the control of another person. The move to emphasize respect for patient's autonomy rose from the vulnerabilities that were pointed out in regards to autonomy. However, autonomy does not only apply in a research context. Users of the health care system have the right to be treated with respect for their autonomy, instead of being dominated by the physician. This is referred to as paternalism. While paternalism is meant to be overall good for the patient, this can very easily interfere with autonomy. Through the therapeutic relationship, a thoughtful dialogue between the client and the physician may lead to better outcomes for the client, as he or she is more of a participant in decision-making. There are many different definitions of autonomy, many of which place the individual in a social context. Relational autonomy, which suggests that a person is defined through their relationships with others, is increasingly considered in medicine and particularly in critical and end-of-life care. Supported autonomy suggests instead that in specific circumstances it may be necessary to temporarily compromise the autonomy of the person in the short term in order to preserve their autonomy in the long-term. Other definitions of the autonomy imagine the person as a contained and self-sufficient being whose rights should not be compromised under any circumstance. There are also differing views with regard to whether modern health care systems should be shifting to greater patient autonomy or a more paternalistic approach. For example, there are such arguments that suggest the current patient autonomy practiced is plagued by flaws such as misconceptions of treatment and cultural differences, and that health care systems should be shifting to greater paternalism on the part of the physician given their expertise.  On the other hand, other approaches suggest that there simply needs to be an increase in relational understanding between patients and health practitioners to improve patient autonomy. One argument in favor of greater patient autonomy and its benefits is by Dave deBronkart, who believes that in the technological advancement age, patients are capable of doing a lot of their research on medical issues from their home. According to deBronkart, this helps to promote better discussions between patients and physicians during hospital visits, ultimately easing up the workload of physicians. deBronkart argues that this leads to greater patient empowerment and a more educative health care system. In opposition to this view, technological advancements can sometimes be viewed as an unfavorable way of promoting patient autonomy. For example, self-testing medical procedures which have become increasingly common are argued by Greaney et al. to increase patient autonomy, however, may not be promoting what is best for the patient. In this argument, contrary to deBronkart, the current perceptions of patient autonomy are excessively over-selling the benefits of individual autonomy, and is not the most suitable way to go about treating patients. Instead, a more inclusive form of autonomy should be implemented, relational autonomy, which factors into consideration those close to the patient as well as the physician. These different concepts of autonomy can be troublesome as the acting physician is faced with deciding which concept he/she will implement into their clinical practice. It is often references as one of the four pillars of medicine, alongside beneficence, justice and nonmaleficence Autonomy varies and some patients find it overwhelming especially the minors when faced with emergency situations. Issues arise in emergency room situations where there may not be time to consider the principle of patient autonomy. Various ethical challenges are faced in these situations when time is critical, and patient consciousness may be limited. However, in such settings where informed consent may be compromised, the working physician evaluates each individual case to make the most professional and ethically sound decision. For example, it is believed that neurosurgeons in such situations, should generally do everything they can to respect patient autonomy. In the situation in which a patient is unable to make an autonomous decision, the neurosurgeon should discuss with the surrogate decision maker in order to aid in the decision-making process. Performing surgery on a patient without informed consent is in general thought to only be ethically justified when the neurosurgeon and his/her team render the patient to not have the capacity to make autonomous decisions. If the patient is capable of making an autonomous decision, these situations are generally less ethically strenuous as the decision is typically respected. Not every patient is capable of making an autonomous decision. For example, a commonly proposed question is at what age children should be partaking in treatment decisions. This question arises as children develop differently, therefore making it difficult to establish a standard age at which children should become more autonomous. Those who are unable to make the decisions prompt a challenge to medical practitioners since it becomes difficult to determine the ability of a patient to make a decision. To some extent, it has been said that emphasis of autonomy in health care has undermined the practice of health care practitioners to improve the health of their patient as necessary. The scenario has led to tension in the relationship between a patient and a health care practitioner. This is because as much as a physician wants to prevent a patient from suffering, they still have to respect autonomy. Beneficence is a principle allowing physicians to act responsibly in their practice and in the best interests of their patients, which may involve overlooking autonomy. However, the gap between a patient and a physician has led to problems because in other cases, the patients have complained of not being adequately informed. The seven elements of informed consent (as defined by Beauchamp and Childress) include threshold elements (competence and voluntariness), information elements (disclosure, recommendation, and understanding) and consent elements (decision and authorization). Some philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt consider Beauchamp and Childress criteria insufficient. They claim that an action can only be considered autonomous if it involves the exercise of the capacity to form higher-order values about desires when acting intentionally. What this means is that patients may understand their situation and choices but would not be autonomous unless the patient is able to form value judgements about their reasons for choosing treatment options they would not be acting autonomously. In certain unique circumstances, government may have the right to temporarily override the right to bodily integrity in order to preserve the life and well-being of the person. Such action can be described using the principle of "supported autonomy", a concept that was developed to describe unique situations in mental health (examples include the forced feeding of a person dying from the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, or the temporary treatment of a person living with a psychotic disorder with antipsychotic medication). While controversial, the principle of supported autonomy aligns with the role of government to protect the life and liberty of its citizens. Terrence F. Ackerman has highlighted problems with these situations, he claims that by undertaking this course of action physician or governments run the risk of misinterpreting a conflict of values as a constraining effect of illness on a patient's autonomy. Since the 1960s, there have been attempts to increase patient autonomy including the requirement that physician's take bioethics courses during their time in medical school. Despite large-scale commitment to promoting patient autonomy, public mistrust of medicine in developed countries has remained. Onora O'Neill has ascribed this lack of trust to medical institutions and professionals introducing measures that benefit themselves, not the patient. O'Neill claims that this focus on autonomy promotion has been at the expense of issues like distribution of healthcare resources and public health. One proposal to increase patient autonomy is through the use of support staff. The use of support staff including medical assistants, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and other staff that can promote patient interests and better patient care. Nurses especially can learn about patient beliefs and values in order to increase informed consent and possibly persuade the patient through logic and reason to entertain a certain treatment plan. This would promote both autonomy and beneficence, while keeping the physician's integrity intact. Furthermore, Humphreys asserts that nurses should have professional autonomy within their scope of practice (35–37). Humphreys argues that if nurses exercise their professional autonomy more, then there will be an increase in patient autonomy (35–37). International human rights law After the Second World War, there was a push for international human rights that came in many waves. Autonomy as a basic human right started the building block in the beginning of these layers alongside liberty. The Universal declarations of Human rights of 1948 has made mention of autonomy or the legal protected right to individual self-determination in article 22. Documents such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reconfirm international law in the aspect of human rights because those laws were already there, but it is also responsible for making sure that the laws highlighted when it comes to autonomy, cultural and integrity; and land rights are made within an indigenous context by taking special attention to their historical and contemporary events The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples article 3 also through international law provides Human rights for Indigenous individuals by giving them a right to self-determination, meaning they have all the liberties to choose their political status, and are capable to go and improve their economic, social, and cultural statuses in society, by developing it. Another example of this, is article 4 of the same document which gives them autonomous rights when it comes to their internal or local affairs and how they can fund themselves in order to be able to self govern themselves. Minorities in countries are also protected as well by international law; the 27th article of the United Nations International covenant on Civil and Political rights or the ICCPR does so by allowing these individuals to be able to enjoy their own culture or use their language. Minorities in that manner are people from ethnic religious or linguistic groups according to the document. The European Court of Human rights, is an international court that has been created on behalf of the European Conventions of Human rights. However, when it comes to autonomy they did not explicitly state it when it comes to the rights that individuals have. The current article 8 has remedied to that when the case of Pretty v the United Kingdom, a case in 2002 involving assisted suicide, where autonomy was used as a legal right in law. It was where Autonomy was distinguished and its reach into law was marked as well making it the foundations for legal precedent in making case law originating from the European Court of Human rights. The Yogyakarta Principles, a document with no binding effect in international human rights law, contend that "self-determination" used as meaning of autonomy on one's own matters including informed consent or sexual and reproductive rights, is integral for one's self-defined or gender identity and refused any medical procedures as a requirement for legal recognition of the gender identity of transgender. If eventually accepted by the international community in a treaty, this would make these ideas human rights in the law. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also defines autonomy as principles of rights of a person with disability including "the freedom to make one's own choices, and independence of persons". Celebrity culture on teenage autonomy A study conducted by David C. Giles and John Maltby conveyed that after age-affecting factors were removed, a high emotional autonomy was a significant predictor of celebrity interest, as well as high attachment to peers with a low attachment to parents. Patterns of intense personal interest in celebrities was found to be conjunction with low levels of closeness and security. Furthermore, the results suggested that adults with a secondary group of pseudo-friends during development from parental attachment, usually focus solely on one particular celebrity, which could be due to difficulties in making this transition. Various uses In computing, an autonomous peripheral is one that can be used with the computer turned off. Within self-determination theory in psychology, autonomy refers to 'autonomy support versus control', "hypothesizing that autonomy-supportive social contexts tend to facilitate self-determined motivation, healthy development, and optimal functioning." In mathematical analysis, an ordinary differential equation is said to be autonomous if it is time-independent. In linguistics, an autonomous language is one which is independent of other languages, for example, has a standard variety, grammar books, dictionaries or literature, etc. In robotics, "autonomy means independence of control. This characterization implies that autonomy is a property of the relation between two agents, in the case of robotics, of the relations between the designer and the autonomous robot. Self-sufficiency, situatedness, learning or development, and evolution increase an agent's degree of autonomy.", according to Rolf Pfeifer. In spaceflight, autonomy can also refer to crewed missions that are operating without control by ground controllers. In economics, autonomous consumption is consumption expenditure when income levels are zero, making spending autonomous to income. In politics, autonomous territories are States wishing to retain territorial integrity in opposition to ethnic or indigenous demands for self-determination or independence (sovereignty). In anti-establishment activism, an autonomous space is another name for a non-governmental social center or free space (for community interaction). In social psychology, autonomy is a personality trait characterized by a focus on personal achievement, independence, and a preference for solitude, often labeled as an opposite of sociotropy. Limits to autonomy Autonomy can be limited. For instance, by disabilities, civil society organizations may achieve a degree of autonomy albeit nested within—and relative to—formal bureaucratic and administrative regimes. Community partners can therefore assume a hybridity of capture and autonomy—or a mutuality—that is rather nuanced. Semi-autonomy The term semi-autonomy (coined with prefix semi- / "half") designates partial or limited autonomy. As a relative term, it is usually applied to various semi-autonomous entities or processes that are substantially or functionally limited, in comparison to other fully autonomous entities or processes. Quasi-autonomy The term quasi-autonomy (coined with prefix quasi- / "resembling" or "appearing") designates formally acquired or proclaimed, but functionally limited or constrained autonomy. As a descriptive term, it is usually applied to various quasi-autonomous entities or processes that are formally designated or labeled as autonomous, but in reality remain functionally dependent or influenced by some other entity or process. An example for such use of the term can be seen in common designation for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations. See also Autonomism List of autonomous areas by country Autonomy Day Cornelius Castoriadis Counterdependency Direct democracy Equality of autonomy Essential facilities doctrine Flat organization Takis Fotopoulos Home rule Job autonomy Personal boundaries Self-governing colony Self-sufficiency Teaching for social justice Viable system model Workplace democracy Notes References Citations Sources External links Kastner, Jens. "Autonomy" (2015). University Bielefeld – Center for InterAmerican Studies. "Self-sustainability strategies for Development Initiatives: What is self-sustainability and why is it so important?" Ethical principles Individualism Organizational cybernetics

Ideocracy

Ideocracy (a portmanteau word combining "ideology" and kratos, Greek for "power") is "governance of a state according to the principles of a particular (political) ideology; a state or country governed in this way". It is government based on a monistic ideology—as distinct from an authoritarian state, which is characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms. An ideocratic state can either be totalitarian—citizens being forced to follow an ideology—or populist (citizens voluntarily following an ideology). Every government has ideological bases from which assumptions and policies are drawn; ideocracies are governments wherein one dominant ideology has become deeply ingrained into politics and generally politics has become deeply ingrained into all or most aspects of society. The ideology of an ideocracy presents itself as an absolute, universal, and supreme system for understanding social life, much as a god in a monotheistic belief system. Analysis Sidney and Beatrice Webb used the term ideocracy in 1936, and it was given added currency by Nicholas Berdyaev in 1947. An ideocracy may take a totalitarian form, reliant on force, or a populist form, reliant on the voluntary support of true believers. The totalitarian form contains six components; 1) ideology, 2) a single party typically with one leader, 3) a terroristic police, 4) a monopoly of communications, 5) a monopoly of weaponry, 6) a centrally directed or planned economy. According to Piekalkiewicz and Penn, in addition, an ideocracy such as a strict religious state or Nazi Germany, will suppress scientific research and knowledge if it conflicts with the ideology, Piekalkiewicz and Penn, argue that every state is either organic (the organized expression of a community, within which all individuals are dependent and subsumed, as the fingers belong to the body), or mechanical/pragmatic (an artificial concept in which individuals have rights against the state and are co-equal). As Adlai Stevenson II has said, "Since the beginning of time governments have been engaged in kicking people around. The astonishing achievement in modern times is the idea that citizens should do the kicking". Ideocracies derive political legitimacy, in the view of Piekalkiewicz and Penn, from one of the following ideological sources: nation, race, class, or culture. They also believe that ideocrats will project their own feelings of guilt onto groups of people—Jews, communists, capitalists, heretics—as forces undermining the ideocracy. These scapegoats symbolize the forces that true believers must combat within themselves. Blame for failures of policy is diverted away from the ideocrats onto the scapegoats, who are subjected to mob attacks, terrorism, show trials, and stylized punishments. In Hitler's Germany the drive to exterminate the Jews eventually took priority over every other goal. Citizens of pluralist states may emigrate freely, but those who leave an ideocracy may be branded as traitors. Psychological aspects Individuals within ideocracies develop an authoritarian personality, say Piekalkiewicz and Penn, in order to succeed or survive. Long after the collapse of the ideocracy, these individuals remain resistant to democratization. They develop a closed mind in which their self-realization within the ideocracy overrides the hostility of the 'heretical' outside world. Simple slogans are adopted and repeated as signs of conformity and loyalty. Those who disbelieve the ideology are fatalistic, supporting the system because they feel powerless to change it, or Machiavellian, cynically exploiting the system for their own ends. Both groups develop a form of doublethink. A small minority of self-actualisers, tolerant of ambiguity, are able to resist the monistic belief system and continue to search long-term for new ideas and complex answers. Inception, stabilization, and evolution According to Piekalkiewicz and Penn, ideocracies rise and fall in the following manner: Inception Civil war: As in the USSR, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia. In order to establish the ideocracy, there must be a ruthless charismatic leader: a Lenin, Mao, Castro, Tito. Takeover: Usually a political party with a determined leader ("the leader is the movement") takes power by coup d'état, which creates a bandwagon effect: as in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and in Iran. In an isolated colony: e.g., White South Africa, and the Puritans of New England Stabilization This usually takes 10–15 years. The leader is no longer a Prophet, but is now deified. There is a purge of followers, and bureaucratization of the state and party. The economy is nationalized, and totally mobilized in support of the ideocracy. There will be scapegoating of enemies and terrorizing of dissidents. Evolution Self-destruction. One or more of the following may cause decline. The ideocracy may split into 'warring camps'. It may be ended by a military coup, as in Peronist Argentina. There may be a popular rebellion. The economy may stagnate, as demands exceed ability. There may be external attacks by other states which fear the spread of the ideology, Peaceful erosion. A new generation matures which is less fervent and more tolerant of pluralism. Technological developments and artistic expression (for example, the plays of Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia) erode faith in the ideology. The leadership become a less-effective self-serving, careerist elite. Regeneration may prevent or postpone collapse. The ideology is rethought and adapted, or replaced by a completely new set of ideals. For example, in Poland, communist ideocracy failed in 1980, the recognition of Lech Walesa's Solidarity Trade Union leading to a military coup and authoritarian military rule. Romanian communism ended abruptly in 1989 and again the military took over, trying and executing Ceaușescu. History From ancient history to the 20th century Piekalkiewicz and Penn described Pharaonic Egypt, ancient Babylon, the Aztec and Inca empires, Sparta, the Islamic empire, Imperial Russia and Imperial China as ideocracies and cite Tito's Yugoslavia, Peronist Argentina, Iraq under Saddam, the USSR, Salazar's Portugal, Albania, the Warsaw pact countries, and Imperial Japan as among those that rose and fell in the 20th century. Both Catholic and Protestant extremists in Northern Ireland sought ideocratic solutions, but were thwarted by British troops. According to Uwe Backes and Steffan Kailitz, the USSR, Italy under Fascism, Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) all rose and fell as ideocracies during the 20th century. The populist form of ideocracy has been an important force in Latin American political history, where many charismatic leaders have emerged since the beginning of the 20th century. 21st century Uwe Backes lists China, North Korea and Cuba as regimes currently showing ideocratic tendencies. Willfried Spohn states that China is an ideocracy. Gordon White said in 1999 China had ceased to be one. Piekalkiewicz and Penn cite Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan as still extant ideocracies. In Israel, only the religious Jewish settlers and ultranationalists seek ideocratic solutions. Peter Bernholz asserts that Saudi Arabia, with its Wahhabist ideology, has been an ideocracy since 1924. See also Political religion Power politics Power Politics (Wight book) State collapse References Ideocracy Authoritarianism

Nomothetic and idiographic

Nomothetic and idiographic are terms used by Neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband to describe two distinct approaches to knowledge, each one corresponding to a different intellectual tendency, and each one corresponding to a different branch of academia. To say that Windelband supported that last dichotomy is a consequent misunderstanding of his own thought. For him, any branch of science and any discipline can be handled by both methods as they offer two integrating points of view. Nomothetic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to generalize, and is typical for the natural sciences. It describes the effort to derive laws that explain types or categories of objective phenomena, in general. Idiographic is based on what Kant described as a tendency to specify, and is typical for the humanities. It describes the effort to understand the meaning of contingent, unique, and often cultural or subjective phenomena. Use in the social sciences The problem of whether to use nomothetic or idiographic approaches is most sharply felt in the social sciences, whose subject are unique individuals (idiographic perspective), but who have certain general properties or behave according to general rules (nomothetic perspective). Often, nomothetic approaches are quantitative, and idiographic approaches are qualitative, although the "Personal Questionnaire" developed by Monte B. Shapiro and its further developments (e.g. Discan scale and PSYCHLOPS) are both quantitative and idiographic. Another very influential quantitative but idiographic tool is the Repertory grid when used with elicited constructs and perhaps elicited elements. Personal cognition (D.A. Booth) is idiographic, qualitative and quantitative, using the individual's own narrative of action within situation to scale the ongoing biosocial cognitive processes in units of discrimination from norm (with M.T. Conner 1986, R.P.J. Freeman 1993 and O. Sharpe 2005). Methods of "rigorous idiography" allow probabilistic evaluation of information transfer even with fully idiographic data. In psychology, idiographic describes the study of the individual, who is seen as a unique agent with a unique life history, with properties setting them apart from other individuals (see idiographic image). A common method to study these unique characteristics is an (auto)biography, i.e. a narrative that recounts the unique sequence of events that made the person who they are. Nomothetic describes the study of classes or cohorts of individuals. Here the subject is seen as an exemplar of a population and their corresponding personality traits and behaviours. It is widely held that the terms idiographic and nomothetic were introduced to American psychology by Gordon Allport in 1937, but Hugo Münsterberg used them in his 1898 presidential address at the American Psychological Association meeting. This address was published in Psychological Review in 1899. Theodore Millon stated that when spotting and diagnosing personality disorders, first clinicians start with the nomothetic perspective and look for various general scientific laws; then when they believe they have identified a disorder, they switch their view to the idiographic perspective to focus on the specific individual and his or her unique traits. In sociology, the nomothetic model tries to find independent variables that account for the variations in a given phenomenon (e.g. What is the relationship between timing/frequency of childbirth and education?). Nomothetic explanations are probabilistic and usually incomplete. The idiographic model focuses on a complete, in-depth understanding of a single case (e.g. Why do I not have any pets?). In anthropology, idiographic describes the study of a group, seen as an entity, with specific properties that set it apart from other groups. Nomothetic refers to the use of generalization rather than specific properties in the same context. See also Nomological References Further reading Cone, J. D. (1986). "Idiographic, nomothetic, and related perspectives in behavioral assessment." In: R. O. Nelson & S. C. Hayes (eds.): Conceptual foundations of behavioral assessment (pp. 111–128). New York: Guilford. Thomae, H. (1999). "The nomothetic-idiographic issue: Some roots and recent trends." International Journal of Group Tensions, 28(1), 187–215. Concepts in epistemology

Democratic socialism

Democratic socialism is a left-wing set of political philosophies that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist, decentralised planned, or democratic centrally planned socialist economy. Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity and that these ideals can only be achieved through the realisation of a socialist society. Although most democratic socialists seek a gradual transition to socialism, democratic socialism can support revolutionary or reformist politics to establish socialism. Democratic socialism was popularised by socialists who opposed the backsliding towards a one-party state in the Soviet Union and other nations during the 20th century. The history of democratic socialism can be traced back to 19th-century socialist thinkers across Europe and the Chartist movement in Britain, which somewhat differed in their goals but shared a common demand for democratic decision-making and public ownership of the means of production and viewed these as fundamental characteristics of the society they advocated for. From the late 19th to the early 20th century, democratic socialism was heavily influenced by the gradualist form of socialism promoted by the British Fabian Society and Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism in Germany. Democratic socialism has been used in multiple senses, including a broad sense that refers to all forms of socialism which reject Marxist–Leninism and authoritarianism. The broad interpretation of democratic socialism is more similar to the historical understanding of libertarian socialism. In the broad sense, democratic socialism includes anti-authoritarian forms of social democracy, liberal socialism, utopian socialism, market socialism, reformist socialism, revolutionary socialism, state socialism, left populism, Trotskyism, and Eurocommunism. In the narrow sense, democratic socialism refers to the anti-capitalist wing of social democracy, seeking to quickly move beyond the welfare state. Overview Democratic socialism is contrasted with Marxism–Leninism, whose opponents often perceive as being authoritarian, bureaucratic, and undemocratic in practice. Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and the Marxist–Leninist economic planning system, rejecting as their form of governance the administrative-command model formed in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states during the 20th century. Democratic socialism is also distinguished from Third Way social democracy because democratic socialists are committed to the systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism, while social democrats use capitalism to create a strong welfare state, leaving many businesses under private ownership. However, many democratic socialists also advocate for state regulations and welfare programs in order to reduce the perceived harms of capitalism and slowly transform the economic system. While having socialism as a long-term goal, some moderate democratic socialists are more concerned about curbing capitalism's excesses and are supportive of progressive reforms to humanise it in the present day. In contrast, other democratic socialists believe that economic interventionism and similar policy reforms aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing capitalism's economic contradictions can simply exacerbate them or cause them to emerge under a different guise. Those democratic socialists believe that the fundamental issues with capitalism can only be resolved by revolutionary means of replacing the capitalist mode of production with the socialist mode of production through a replacement of private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere in the form of workplace democracy or industrial democracy. The main criticism of democratic socialism from the perspective of liberal democrats is focused on the compatibility of democracy and socialism, while Marxist–Leninist criticisms are focused on the feasibility of achieving a socialist or communist society through democratic means or without suppressing counter-revolutionary forces. Several academics, political commentators, and scholars have noted that some Western countries, such as France, Sweden and the United Kingdom, have been governed by socialist parties or have social democratic mixed economies sometimes referred to as "democratic socialist". However, some have argued that following the end of the Cold War, many of these countries have moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world. Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled alongside a democratic political system of government. Democratic socialists reject most self-described socialist states, which followed Marxism–Leninism. In democratic socialism, the active participation of the population and workers in the self-management of the economy characterises socialism, while administrative-command systems do not. Nicos Poulantzas makes a similar, more complex argument. For Hal Draper, revolutionary-democratic socialism is a type of socialism from below, writing in The Two Souls of Socialism that "the leading spokesman in the Second International of a revolutionary-democratic Socialism-from-Below was Rosa Luxemburg, who so emphatically put her faith and hope in the spontaneous struggle of a free working class that the myth-makers invented for her a 'theory of spontaneity.'" Similarly, he wrote about Eugene V. Debs that "'Debsian socialism' evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism." Some Marxist socialists emphasise Karl Marx's belief in democracy and call themselves democratic socialists. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement define socialism in its classical formulation as a "system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the community." Additionally, they include classlessness, statelessness and the abolition of wage labour as characteristics of a socialist society, characterising it as a stateless, propertyless, post-monetary economy based on calculation in kind, a free association of producers, workplace democracy and free access to goods and services produced solely for use and not for exchange. Although these characteristics are usually reserved to describe a communist society, this is consistent with the usage of Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, who referred to communism and socialism interchangeably. Definition The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), defines democratic socialism as a decentralised socially-owned economy and rejecting both authoritarian socialism and social democracy, stating: Tony Benn, a prominent left-wing Labour Party politician, described democratic socialism as socialism that is "open, libertarian, pluralistic, humane and democratic; nothing whatever in common with the harsh, centralised, dictatorial and mechanistic images which are purposely presented by our opponents and a tiny group of people who control the mass media in Britain." Some tendencies of democratic socialism advocate for a social revolution to transition to socialism, distinguishing it from some forms of social democracy. In Soviet politics, democratic socialism is the version of the Soviet Union model reformed democratically. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described perestroika as building a "new, humane and democratic socialism." Consequently, some former communist parties have rebranded themselves as democratic socialists. This includes parties such as The Left in Germany, a party succeeding the Party of Democratic Socialism, which was itself the legal successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. Some uses of the term democratic socialism represent social democratic policies within capitalism instead of an ideology that aims to transcend and replace capitalism, although this is not always the case. Robert M. Page, a reader in Democratic Socialism and Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, wrote about transformative democratic socialism to refer to the politics of Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee and its government (fiscal redistribution, some degree of public ownership and a strong welfare state) and revisionist democratic socialism as developed by Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland and Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson, arguing: The political scientist Lyman Tower Sargent offers a similar definition based on the practice of social democracy in Europe: Democratic socialism and social democracy Social democracy prior to the displacement of Keynesianism by neoliberalism and monetarism, which caused many social-democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the current status quo and powers that be, redefining socialism in a way that it maintained the capitalist structure intact, has been occasionally described as a form of democratic socialism. The new version of Clause IV of the British Labour Party's constitution, first adopted by former party leader Tony Blair, uses democratic socialism to describe a modernised form of social democracy. While affirming a commitment to democratic socialism, it no longer commits the party to public ownership of industry and, in its place, advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services ... either owned by the public or accountable to them." Donald F. Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey describes social democracy as a form of democratic socialism that follows a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one. This tendency is captured in the statement of Labour revisionist Anthony Crosland, who argued that the socialism of the pre-war world was now becoming increasingly irrelevant. This tendency has been evoked in works such as Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Malcolm Hamilton's Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden, and Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) that liberal democracies were evolving from liberal capitalism into democratic socialism with the growth of industrial democracy, regulatory institutions and self-management. A key difference is that social democrats are mainly concerned with practical reforms within capitalism, with socialism either relegated to the indefinite future or perceived to have abandoned it in the case of the Third Way. More radical democratic socialists want to go beyond mere meliorist reforms and advocate the systemic transformation of the mode of production from capitalism to socialism. While the Third Way has been described as a new social democracy or neo-social democracy, standing for a modernised social democracy and competitive socialism, the form of social democracy that remained committed to the gradual abolition of capitalism and social democrats opposed to the Third Way merged into democratic socialism. During the late 20th century and early 21st century, these labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the development within the European left of Eurocommunism between the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism in the mid to late 1970s, the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and of Marxist–Leninist governments between 1989 and 1992, the rise and fall of the Third Way between the 1970s and 2010s and the simultaneous rise of anti-austerity, green, left-wing populist and Occupy movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession, the causes of which have been widely attributed to the neoliberal shift and deregulation economic policies. This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians that represent a return to the post-war consensus social democracy, such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States, who assumed the democratic socialist label to describe their rejection of centrist politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties such as with New Labour and the New Democrats, respectively. Social democracy originated as a revolutionary socialist or communist movement. One distinction to separate the modern versions of democratic socialism and social democracy is that the former can include revolutionary means. In contrast, the latter asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law, which is to implement social change via reformism. Many social democrats "refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists", and some "use or have used these terms interchangeably." Others argue that "there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term 'social democracy' only." In political science, democratic socialism and social democracy are occasionally seen as synonymous or otherwise not mutually exclusive, while they are usually sharply distinguished in journalistic use. While social democrats continue to call and describe themselves as democratic socialists or simply socialists, the meaning of democratic socialism and social democracy effectively reversed. Democratic socialism originally represented socialism achieved by democratic means and usually resulted in reformism, whereas social democracy included reformist and revolutionary wings. With the association of social democracy as a policy regime and the development of the Third Way, social democracy became almost exclusively associated with capitalist welfare states, while democratic socialism came to refer to anti-capitalist tendencies, including communism, revolutionary socialism, and reformist socialism. Political party While most social-democratic parties describe themselves as democratic socialists, with democratic socialism representing the theory and social democracy the practice and vice versa, political scientists distinguish between the two. Social democratic is used for centre-left political parties, "whose aim is the gradual amelioration of poverty and exploitation within a liberal capitalist society." On the other hand, democratic socialist is used for left-wing socialist parties, including left-wing populist parties such as The Left, Podemos and Syriza. This is reflected at the European party level, where the centre-left social democratic parties are within the Party of European Socialists and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, while left-wing democratic socialist parties are within the Party of the European Left and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left. These democratic socialist groups often include communist tendencies, in contrast to social democratic groups which exclude anti-capitalist tendencies. According to Steve Ludlam, "the arrival of New Labour signalled an unprecedented and possibly final assault on the [British] Labour Party's democratic socialist tradition, that is to say the tradition of those seeking the transformation of capitalism into socialism by overwhelmingly legislative means. ... It would be a while before some of the party's social democrats—those whose aim is the gradual amelioration of poverty and exploitation within a liberal capitalist society—began to fear the same threat to Labour's egalitarian tradition as the left recognised to its socialist tradition." This was reflected similarly in Labour: A Tale of Two Parties by Hilary Wainwright. According to Andrew Mathers, Hilary Wainwright's 1987 work Labour: A Tale of Two Parties provided "a different reading which contrasted the 'ameliorative, pragmatic' social democratic tradition expressed principally in the Parliamentary Labour Party with a 'transformative, visionary' democratic socialist tradition associated mainly with the grassroots members engaged closely with extra-parliamentary struggles." Economics Democratic socialists have promoted various different models of socialism and economics, ranging from market socialism, where socially owned enterprises operate in competitive markets and are self-managed by their workforce, to non-market participatory economics based on decentralised economic planning, and democratic central planning. Democratic socialism can also be committed to a decentralised form of economic planning where productive units are integrated into a single organisation and organised based on self-management. Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas, both United States Presidential candidates for the Socialist Party of America, understood socialism to be an economic system structured upon production for use and social ownership in place of the for-profit system and private ownership of the means of production. Contemporary proponents of market socialism and decentralised planning have argued that rather than socialism itself, the primary reason for the economic shortcomings of Soviet-type economies was their administrative-command system and its failure to create rules and operational criteria for the efficient operation of state enterprises in their hierarchical allocation of resources and commodities. All types of democratic socialists, including those in favor of central planning, often cite the lack of democracy in the political and economic systems of Marxist–Leninist regimes as a reason for their historical or contemporary shortcomings or failures. Democratic planning A democratically planned economy has been proposed as a basis for socialism and variously advocated by some democratic socialists who simultaneously reject market socialism and Soviet-type economic planning. Democratic economic planning implies some process of democratic or participatory decision-making within the economy and firms in the form of industrial democracy. Supporters of democratic economic planning often reject market socialism on the basis that it fails to broadly coordinate information and resources according to social needs, and reject the Soviet model-based administrative-command system due to inefficient or undemocratic operation. Democratic socialist proponents of decentralised planning assert that it allows for a spontaneously self-regulating system of stock control, relying solely on calculation in kind, to come about and that in turn decisively overcomes the objections raised by the economic calculation argument that any large-scale economy must necessarily resort to a system of market prices. Decentralised planning models often involve workers' councils or industrial unions, and include models proposed by anarchist economists Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel as participatory economics; and economist Pat Devine as "negotiated coordination," based on representative democracy. On the other hand, democratic socialist proponents of centralised planning argue that it is better equipped to carry out economy-wide coordination and strengthen the collective power of the working class. David McNally, a professor at the University of Houston, has argued in the Marxist tradition that the logic of the market inherently produces social inequality and leads to unequal exchanges, writing that Adam Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange were undermined by the practice of the free market he championed as the development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Smith's moral philosophy could not counteract. McNally criticises market socialists for believing in the possibility of fair markets based on equal exchanges to be achieved by purging parasitical elements from the market economy, such as private ownership of the means of production, arguing that market socialism is an oxymoron when socialism is defined as an end to wage labour. Various computer scientists and radical economists have also proposed computer-based forms of democratic economic planning and coordination between economic enterprises, based on either centralised or decentralised models. Chile explored computerised central planning from 1971 to 1973 with Project Cybersyn. In 1993, computer scientist Paul Cockshott and economics professor Allin Cottrell proposed in Towards a New Socialism a computerised central planning model based on direct democracy and modern technological advances. Market socialism Some proponents of market socialism see it as an economic system compatible with the political ideology of democratic socialism. Democratic socialist advocates of market socialism often support the development of worker cooperatives, and sometimes market-based sovereign wealth funds. Advocates of market socialism, such as Jaroslav Vaněk, argue that genuinely free markets are impossible under private ownership of productive property. Vaněk contends that the class differences and unequal distribution of income and economic power that result from private ownership of industry enable the interests of the dominant class to skew the market in their favour, either in the form of monopoly and market power or by utilising their wealth and resources to legislate government policies that benefit their specific business interests. Additionally, Vaněk states that workers in a socialist economy based on worker-owned cooperatives have more substantial incentives to maximise productivity because they would receive a share of the profits based on the overall performance of their enterprise, plus their fixed wage or salary. The Lange–Lerner model is a model first proposed by Oskar R. Lange in 1936 in response to the socialist calculation debate and later expanded by Abba P. Lerner in 1938, which is based on public ownership of the means of production with simultaneous market-based allocation of consumer goods. While this model is typically considered a type of centrally planned economy, Lange and Lerner referred to it as a market socialist model. Many pre-Marx socialists and proto-socialists were fervent anti-capitalists just as they were supporters of the free market, including the British philosopher Thomas Hodgskin, the French mutualist thinker and anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and American philosophers Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, among others. Although capitalism has been commonly conflated with the free market, there is a similar laissez-faire economic theory and system associated with socialism called left-wing laissez-faire to distinguish it from laissez-faire capitalism. One example of this democratic market socialist tendency is mutualism, a democratic and libertarian socialist theory developed by Proudhon in the 18th century, from which individualist anarchism emerged. Benjamin Tucker is one eminent American individualist anarchist who adopted a laissez-faire socialist system he termed anarchistic socialism as opposed to state socialism. This tradition has been recently associated with contemporary scholars such as Kevin Carson, Gary Chartier, Charles W. Johnson, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Roderick T. Long, Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Brad Spangler, who stress the value of radically free markets, termed freed markets to distinguish them from the common conception which these left-libertarians believe to be riddled with statism and bourgeois privileges. Sometimes referred to as left-wing market anarchists, proponents of this approach strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions, these ideas support anti-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical and pro-labour positions in economics, anti-imperialism in foreign policy and radically progressive views regarding sociocultural issues such as gender, sexuality and race. Echoing the language of these market socialists, they maintain that radical market anarchism should be seen by its proponents and by others as part of the socialist tradition because of its heritage, emancipatory goals and potential and that market anarchists can and should call themselves socialists. Critics of the free market and laissez-faire, as commonly understood, argue that socialism is fully compatible with a market economy and that a genuinely free-market or laissez-faire system would be anti-capitalist and socialist. According to its supporters, this would result in the society advocated by democratic socialists, when socialism is not understood as state socialism and conflated with self-described socialist states. The free market and laissez-faire are free from all economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. This is consistent with the classical economics view that economic rents, i.e. profits generated from a lack of perfect competition, must be reduced or eliminated as much as possible through free competition rather than free from regulation. Implementation While socialism is commonly used to describe Marxism–Leninism and affiliated states and governments, there have also been several anarchist and socialist societies that followed democratic socialist principles, encompassing anti-authoritarian and democratic anti-capitalism. The most notable historical examples are the Paris Commune, the various soviet republics established in the post-World War I period, early Soviet Russia before the abolition of soviet councils by the Bolsheviks, Revolutionary Catalonia as noted by George Orwell, and the Federation of Rojava in Northern Syria. Other examples include the kibbutz communities in modern-day Israel, Marinaleda in Spain, the Zapatistas of EZLN in the region of Chiapas, and to some extent, the workers' self-management policies within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Cuba. However, the best-known example is Chile under President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a military coup funded and backed by the CIA in 1973. When nationalisation of large industries was relatively widespread during the Keynesian post-war consensus, it was not uncommon for some political commentators to describe several European countries as democratic socialist states seeking to move their countries towards a socialist economy. In 1956, leading British Labour Party politician Anthony Crosland claimed that capitalism had been abolished in Britain. However, others, such as Welshman Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health in the first post-war Labour government and the architect of the National Health Service, disputed the claim that Britain was a socialist state. For Crosland and others who supported his views, Britain was a socialist state. According to Bevan, Britain had a socialist National Health Service, which opposed the hedonism of Britain's capitalist society. Although the laws of capitalism still operated entirely as in the rest of Europe and private enterprise dominated the economy, several political commentators claimed that during the post-war period, when socialist parties were in power, countries such as Britain and France were democratic socialist states. The same claim is now applied to Nordic countries with the Nordic model. In the 1980s, the government of President François Mitterrand aimed to expand dirigisme by attempting to nationalise all French banks, but this attempt faced opposition from the European Economic Community, which demanded a capitalist free-market economy among its members. Nevertheless, public ownership in France and the United Kingdom during the height of nationalisation in the 1960s and 1970s never accounted for more than 15–20% of capital formation. The form of socialism practised by parties such as the Singaporean People's Action Party during its first few decades in power was pragmatic, as it its rejection of mass nationalisation characterised it. The party still claimed to be socialist, pointing out its extensive regulation of the private sector, activist intervention in the economy and social welfare policies as evidence of this claim. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew stated that he had been influenced by the democratic socialist factions of the British Labour Party. Philosophy Democratic socialism involves the majority of the population controlling the economy through some democratic system, with the idea that the means of production are owned and managed by the working class. The interrelationship between democracy and socialism extends far back into the socialist movement to The Communist Manifesto'''s emphasis on winning as a first step the "battle of democracy", with Karl Marx writing that democracy is "the road to socialism." Socialist thinkers such as Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg wrote that democracy is indispensable to realising socialism. Philosophical support for democratic socialism can be found in the works of political philosophers such as Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor. Honneth has put forward the view that political and economic ideologies have a social basis, meaning they originate from intersubjective communication between members of society. Honneth criticises the liberal state and ideology because it assumes that principles of individual liberty and private property are ahistorical and abstract when they evolved from a specific social discourse on human activity. In contrast to liberal individualism, Honneth has emphasised the intersubjective dependence between humans, namely that human well-being depends on recognising others and being recognised by them. With an emphasis on community and solidarity, democratic socialism can be seen as a way of safeguarding this dependency. While socialism is frequently used to describe socialist states and Soviet-style economies, especially in the United States due to the First and Second Red Scares, democratic socialists use socialism to refer to the tendency that rejects the ideas of authoritarian socialism and state socialism as socialism, regarding them as a form of state capitalism in which the state undertakes commercial economic activity and where the means of production are organised and managed as state-owned enterprises, including the processes of capital accumulation, centralised management and wage labour. Democratic socialists include those socialists who are opposed to Marxism–Leninism and social democrats who are committed to the abolishment of capitalism in favour of socialism and the institution of a post-capitalist economy. Andrew Lipow thus wrote in 1847 the editors of the Journal of the Communist League, directly influenced by Marx and Friedrich Engels, whom Lipow describes as "the founders of modern revolutionary democratic socialism": Theoretically and philosophically, socialism itself is democratic, seen as the highest democratic form by its proponents and at one point being the same as democracy. Some argue that socialism implies democracy and that democratic socialism is a redundant term. However, others, such as Michael Harrington, argue that the term democratic socialism is necessary to distinguish it from that of the Soviet Union and other self-declared socialist states. For Harrington, the primary reason for this was the perspective that viewed the Stalinist-era Soviet Union as having succeeded in usurping the legacy of Marxism and distorting it in propaganda to justify its politics. Both Leninism and Marxism–Leninism have emphasised democracy, endorsing some form of democratic organisation of society and the economy whilst supporting democratic centralism, with Marxist–Leninists and others arguing that socialist states such as the Soviet Union were democratic. Marxist–Leninists also tended to distinguish socialist democracy from democratic socialism, which they associated pejoratively with "reformism" and "social democracy." Ultimately, they are considered outside the democratic socialist tradition. On the other hand, anarchism (especially within its social anarchist tradition) and other ultra-left tendencies have been discussed within the democratic socialist tradition for their opposition to Marxism–Leninism and their support for more decentralised, direct forms of democracy. While both anarchists and ultra-left tendencies have rejected the label as they tend to associate it with reformist and statist forms of democratic socialism, they are considered revolutionary-democratic forms of socialism, and some anarchists have referred to democratic socialism. Some Trotskyist organisations such as the Australian Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Victorian Socialists or the French New Anticapitalist Party, Revolutionary Communist League and Socialism from below have described their form of socialism as democratic and have emphasised democracy in their revolutionary development of socialism. Similarly, several Trotskyists have emphasised Leon Trotsky's revolutionary-democratic socialism. Some such as Hal Draper spoke of "revolutionary-democratic socialism." Those third camp revolutionary-democratic socialists advocated a socialist political revolution to establish or re-establish socialist democracy in deformed or degenerated workers' states. Draper also compared social democracy and Stalinism as two forms of socialism from above, contraposed to his socialism from below as being the purer, more Marxist version of socialism. As a political tradition, democratic socialism represents a broad anti-Stalinist leftist and, in many cases, anti-Leninist strand within the socialist movement, including anti-authoritarian socialism from below, libertarian socialism, market socialism, Marxism and certain left communist and ultra-left tendencies such as councilism and communisation as well as classical and libertarian Marxism. It also includes the orthodox Marxism related to Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg, as well as the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein. In addition, democratic socialism is related to the trend of Eurocommunism originating between the 1950s and 1980s, referring to communist parties that adopted democratic socialism after Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation in 1956, but also that of most communist parties since the 1990s. As a related ideology, classical social democracy is a form of democratic socialism. Social democracy underwent various major forms throughout its history and is distinguished between the early trend that supported revolutionary socialism, mainly related to Marx and Engels, as well as other notable social-democratic politicians and orthodox Marxist thinkers such as Bernstein, Kautsky, Luxemburg and Lenin, including more democratic and libertarian interpretations of Leninism; the revisionist trend adopted by Bernstein and other reformist socialist leaders between the 1890s and 1940s; the post-war trend that adopted or endorsed Keynesian welfare capitalism as part of a compromise between capitalism and socialism; and those opposed to the Third Way. Views on the compatibility of democracy and socialism Support One of the foremost scholars who have argued that socialism and democracy are compatible is the Austrian-born American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who was hostile to socialism. In his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Schumpeter emphasised that "political democracy was thoroughly compatible with socialism in its fullest sense". However, it has been noted that he did not believe that democracy was a sound political system and advocated republican values. In a 1963 All India Congress Committee address, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru stated: "Political democracy has no meaning if it does not embrace economic democracy. And economic democracy is nothing but socialism." Political historian Theodore Draper wrote: "I know of no political group which has resisted totalitarianism in all its guises more steadfastly than democratic socialists." Historian and economist Robert Heilbroner argued that "[t]here is, of course, no conflict between such a socialism and freedom as we have described it; indeed, this conception of socialism is the very epitome of these freedoms", referring to open association of individuals in political and social life; the democratization and humanization of work; and the cultivation of personal talents and creativity. Bayard Rustin, a long-time member of the Socialist Party of America and National Chairman of the Social Democrats, USA, wrote: "For me, socialism has meaning only if it is democratic. Of the many claimants to socialism only one has a valid title—that socialism which views democracy as valuable per se, which stands for democracy unequivocally, and which continually modifies socialist ideas and programs in the light of democratic experience. This is the socialism of the labor, social-democratic, and socialist parties of Western Europe." Economist and political theorist Kenneth Arrow argued: "We cannot be sure that the principles of democracy and socialism are compatible until we can observe a viable society following both principles. But there is no convincing evidence or reasoning which would argue that a democratic-socialist movement is inherently self-contradictory. Nor need we fear that gradual moves in the direction of increasing government intervention will lead to an irreversible move to 'serfdom.'" Journalist William Pfaff wrote: "It might be argued that socialism ineluctably breeds state bureaucracy, which then imposes its own kinds of restrictions upon individual liberties. This is what the Scandinavians complain about. But Italy's champion bureaucracy owes nothing to socialism. American bureaucracy grows as luxuriantly and behaves as officiously as any other." Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel and his colleague Dylan Sullivan argue that in order to transcend the problems associated with the persistent underdevelopment in the contemporary "imperialist world economy", where "continued capital accumulation may create pressures for cheapening labour" which "works against the goals of human development," and also the top-down authoritarian socialism as experienced in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, which they argue is "at odds with the socialist goals of workers’ self-management and democratic control over production," it will be necessary to adopt a "socialist strategy in the twenty-first century that is radically democratic, extending democracy to production itself." Marxist theorist and revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote that: "Socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen". In particular, he believed that central planners in the Soviet Union, regardless of their intellectual capacity, operated without the input and participation of the millions of people who participate in the economy and so they would be unable to respond to local conditions quickly enough to effectively coordinate all economic activity. In the Transitional Program'', which was drafted in 1938 during the founding congress of the Fourth International, Trotsky called for the legalization of the Soviet parties and worker's control of production. Opposition Some anti-socialist politicians, economists, and theorists have argued that socialism and democracy are incompatible. According to them, history is full of instances of self-declared socialist states that at one point were committed to the values of personal liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of association but then found themselves clamping down on such freedoms as they end up being viewed as inconvenient or contrary towards their political or economic goals. Chicago School economist Milton Friedman argued that a "society which is socialist cannot also be democratic" in the sense of "guaranteeing individual freedom." Sociologist Robert Nisbet, a philosophical conservative who began his career as a leftist, argued in 1978 that there is "not a single free socialism to be found anywhere in the world." Neoconservative Irving Kristol argued: "Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered it." Kristol added that "socialist movements end up [in] a society where liberty is the property of the state, and is (or is not) doled out to its citizens along with other contingent 'benefits'." Similarly, anti-communist academic Richard Pipes argued: "The merger of political and economic power implicit in socialism greatly strengthens the ability of the state and its bureaucracy to control the population. Theoretically, this capacity need not be exercised and need not lead to growing domination of the population by the state. In practice, such a tendency is virtually inevitable. For one thing, the socialization of the economy must lead to a numerical growth of the bureaucracy required to administer it, and this process cannot fail to augment the power of the state. For another, socialism leads to a tug of war between the state, bent on enforcing its economic monopoly, and the ordinary citizen, equally determined to evade it; the result is repression and the creation of specialized repressive organs." See also Democratic capitalism Democratic republic Democratic Socialist Party (disambiguation) International Group of Democratic Socialists List of anti-capitalist and communist parties with national parliamentary representation List of social democratic and democratic socialist parties that have governed List of democratic socialist parties and organizations List of democratic socialists List of Labour parties List of left-wing political parties List of social democratic parties List of social democrats Millennial socialism Popular socialism Social Democratic Party Socialist Party Soviet democracy Workers' council References Citations Notes Sources Books Encyclopedias Journals News Speeches Web Bibliography Further reading External links Anti-Stalinist left Anti-capitalism Anti-fascism Socialism Economic ideologies History of socialism Centre-left ideologies Left-wing ideologies Liberal socialism Market socialism Mixed economies Social democracy Socialism Types of socialism

European social model

The European social model is a concept that emerged in the discussion of economic globalization and typically contrasts the degree of employment regulation and social protection in European countries to conditions in the United States. It is commonly cited in policy debates in the European Union, including by representatives of both labour unions and employers, to connote broadly "the conviction that economic progress and social progress are inseparable" and that "[c]ompetitiveness and solidarity have both been taken into account in building a successful Europe for the future". While European states do not all use a single social model, welfare states in Europe share several broad characteristics. These generally include an acceptance of political responsibility for levels and conditions of employment, social protections for all citizens, social inclusion, and democracy. Examples common among European countries include universal health care, free higher education, strong labor protections and regulations, and generous welfare programs in areas such as unemployment insurance, retirement pensions, and public housing. The Treaty of the European Community set out several social objectives: "promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions ... proper social protection, dialogue between management and labour, the development of human resources with a view to lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion." Because different European states focus on different aspects of the model, it has been argued that there are four distinct social models in Europe: the Nordic, British, Mediterranean and the Continental. The general outlines of a European social model emerged during the post-war boom. Tony Judt lists a number of causes: the abandonment of protectionism, the baby boom, cheap energy, and a desire to catch up with living standards enjoyed in the United States. The European social model also enjoyed a low degree of external competition as the Soviet bloc, China and India were still isolated from the rest of the global economy. In recent years, some have questioned whether the European social model is sustainable in the face of low birthrates, globalisation, Europeanisation and an ageing population. Welfare state in Europe Some of the European welfare states have been described as the most well developed and extensive. A unique "European social model" is described in contrast with the social model existing in the US. Although each European country has its own singularities, four traditional welfare or social models are identified in Europe, as well as possible fifth one to cover formerly communist Central and Eastern Europe: The Nordic (Social democratic) model in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands The Continental (Christian democratic) model in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, and Slovenia The Anglo-Saxon (Liberal) model in Ireland and the United Kingdom The Mediterranean model in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain The Eastern European model in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania Nordic model As can be seen in the graph to the right, the Nordic model holds the highest level of social insurance. Its main characteristic is its universal provision nature which is based on the principle of "citizenship". Therefore, there exists a more generalised access, with lower conditionability, to the social provisions. As regards labour market, these countries are characterised by important expenditures in active labour market policies whose aim is a rapid reinsertion of the unemployed into the labour market. These countries are also characterised by a high share of public employment. Trade unions have a high membership and an important decision-making power which induces a low wage dispersion or more equitable income distribution. The Nordic model is also characterised by a high tax wedge. Continental model The Continental model has some similarities with the Nordic model. Nevertheless, it has a higher share of its expenditures devoted to pensions. The model is based on the principle of "security" and a system of subsidies which are not conditioned to employability (for example in the case of France or Belgium, there exist subsidies whose only requirement is being older than 25). As regards the labour market, active policies are less important than in the Nordic model and in spite of a low membership rate, trade-unions have important decision-making powers in collective agreements. Another important aspect of the Continental model is the disability pensions. Anglo-Saxon model The Anglo-Saxon model features a lower level of expenditures than the previous ones. Its main particularity is its social assistance of last resort. Subsidies are directed to a higher extent to the working-age population and to a lower extent to pensions. Access to subsidies is (more) conditioned to employability (for instance, they are conditioned on having worked previously). Active labour market policies are important. Instead, trade unions have smaller decision-making powers than in the previous models, this is one of the reasons explaining their higher income dispersion and their higher number of low-wage employments. Mediterranean model The Mediterranean model corresponds to southern European countries who developed their welfare state later than the previous ones (during the 1970s and 1980s). It is the model with the lowest share of expenditures and is strongly based on pensions and a low level of social assistance. There exists in these countries a higher segmentation of rights and status of persons receiving subsidies which has as one of its consequences a strongly conditioned access to social provisions. The main characteristic of labour market policies is a rigid employment protection legislation and a frequent resort to early retirement policies as a means to improve employment conditions. Trade unions tend to have an important membership which again is one of the explanations behind a lower income dispersion than in the Anglo-Saxon model. Evaluating the different social models To evaluate the different social models, we follow the criteria used in Boeri (2002) and Sapir (2005) which consider that a social model should satisfy the following: Reduction in poverty. Protection against labour market risks. Rewards for labour participation. Reduction in poverty The graph on the right shows the reduction in inequality (as measured by the Gini index) after taking account of taxes and transfers, that is, to which extent does each social model reduce poverty without taking into account the reduction in poverty provoked by taxes and transfers. The level of social expenditures is an indicator of the capacity of each model to reduce poverty: a bigger share of expenditures is in general associated to a higher reduction in poverty. Nevertheless, another aspect that should be taken into account is the efficiency in this poverty reduction. By this is meant that with a lower share of expenditures a higher reduction in poverty may be obtained. In this case, the graph on the right shows that the Anglosaxon and Nordic models are more efficient than the Continental or Mediterranean ones. The Continental model appears to be the least efficient. Given its high level of social expenditures, one would expect a higher poverty reduction than that attained by this model. Remark how the Anglosaxon model is found above the average line drawn whereas the Continental is found below that line. Protection against labour market risks Protection against labour market risks is generally assured by two means: Regulation of the labour market by means of employment protection legislation which basically increases firing costs and severance payments for the employers. This is generally referred to as providing "employment" protection. Unemployment benefits which are commonly financed with taxes or mandatory public insurances to the employees and employers. This is generally referred to as providing protection to the "worker" as opposed to "employment". As can be seen in the graph, there is a clear trade-off between these two types of labour market instruments (remark the clear negative slope between both). Once again different European countries have chosen a different position in their use of these two mechanisms of labour market protection. These differences can be summarised as follows: The Mediterranean countries have chosen a higher "employment" protection while a very low share of their unemployed workers receives unemployment benefits. The Nordic countries have chosen to protect to a lesser extent "employment" and instead, an important share of their unemployed workers receives benefits. The continental countries have a higher level of both mechanisms than the European average, although by a small margin. The Anglo-Saxon countries base their protection on unemployment benefits and a low level of employment protection. Evaluating the different choices is a hard task. In general there exists consensus among economists on the fact that employment protection generates inefficiencies inside firms. Instead, there is no such consensus as regards the question of whether employment protection generates a higher level of unemployment. Rewards for labour participation Sapir (2005) and Boeri (2002) propose looking at the employment-to-population ratio as the best way to analyse the incentives and rewards for employment in each social model. The Lisbon Strategy initiated in 2001 established that the members of the EU should attain a 70% employment rate by 2010. In this case, the graph shows that the countries in the Nordic and Anglosaxon model are the ones with the highest employment rate whereas the Continental and Mediterranean countries have not attained the Lisbon Strategy target. Conclusion Sapir (2005) proposes as a general mean to evaluate the different social models, the following two criteria: Efficiency, that is, whether the model provides the incentives so as to achieve the largest number possible of employed persons, that is, the highest employment rate. Equity, that is, whether the social model achieves a relatively low poverty risk. As can be seen in the graph, according to these two criteria, the best performance is achieved by the Nordic model. The Continental model should improve its efficiency whereas the Anglosaxon model its equity. The Mediterranean model under-performs in both criteria. Some economists consider that between the Continental model and the Anglo-Saxon, the latter should be preferred given its better results in employment, which make it more sustainable in the long term, whereas the equity level depends on the preferences of each country (Sapir, 2005). Other economists argue that the Continental model cannot be considered worse than the Anglosaxon given that it is also the result of the preferences of those countries that support it (Fitoussi et al., 2000; Blanchard, 2004). This last argument can be used to justify any policy. See also Disability pension Social insurance Social protection Social security Social welfare provision Welfare state Location-specific: Tax rates of Europe US welfare state References Bibliography Blanchard, O. (2004): The Economic Future of Europe. NBER Economic Papers. Boeri, T. (2002): Let Social Policy Models Compete and Europe Will Win, conference in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 11–12 April 2002. Sapir, A. (2005): Globalisation and the Reform of European Social Models, Bruegel, Brussels. Downloadable here. Fitoussi J.P. and O. Passet (2000): Reformes structurelles et politiques macroéconomiques: les enseignements des «modèles» de pays, en Reduction du chômage : les réussites en Europe. Rapport du Conseil d'Analyse Economique, n.23, Paris, La documentation Française, pp. 11–96. Busch, Klaus: The Corridor Model – Relaunched, edited by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, International Policy Analysis, Berlin 2011. Economy of Europe Society of Europe Eurozone crisis Political-economic models Social systems Welfare in Europe Welfare state

Means of production

In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the classical factors of production (land, labour, and capital) as well as the general infrastructure and capital goods necessary to reproduce stable levels of productivity. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors; or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers. The concept of "Means of Production" is used by researchers in various fields of study — including politics, economics, and sociology — to discuss, broadly, the relationship between anything that can have productive use, its ownership, and the constituent social parts needed to produce it. Industrial production From the perspective of a firm, a firm uses its capital goods, which are also known as tangible assets as they are physical in nature. Unfinished goods are transformed into products and services in the production process. Even if capital goods are not traded on the market as consumer goods, they can be valued as long as capital goods are produced commodities, which are required for production. The total values of capital goods constitute the capital value. The social means of production are capital goods and assets that require organized collective labor effort, as opposed to individual effort, to operate on. The ownership and organization of the social means of production is a key factor in categorizing and defining different types of economic systems. The means of production includes two broad categories of objects: instruments of labor (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and subjects of labor (natural resources and raw materials). People operate on the subjects of labor using the instruments of labor to create a product; or stated another way, labor acting on the means of production creates a good. In an agrarian society the principal means of production is the soil and the shovel. In an industrial society the means of production become social means of production and include factories and mines. Knowledge production In a knowledge economy, learning, research, development, innovation, ideas and creativity are the means of [knowledge] production; communication such as books, articles, videos disseminated both physically and digitally over the Internet are a means of [knowledge] distribution. In a broad sense, the "means of production" also includes the "means of distribution" such as stores, the internet and railroads (Infrastructural capital). Depreciation The means of production of the firm may depreciate, which means there is a loss in the economic value of capital goods or tangible assets (e.g. machinery, factory equipment) due to wear and tear, and aging. This is known as the depreciation of capital goods. Marxism and Marxist theory of class The analysis of the technological sophistication of the means of production and how they are owned is a central component in the Marxist theoretical framework of historical materialism and in Marx's critique of political economy, and later in Marxian economics. In Marx's work and subsequent developments in Marxist theory, the process of socioeconomic evolution is based on the premise of technological improvements in the means of production. As the level of technology improves with respect to productive capabilities, existing forms of social relations become superfluous and unnecessary as the advancement of technology integrated within the means of production contradicts the established organization of society and its economy. The increasing efficiency of the means of production via the creation and adaptation of new technologies over time has a tendency to rearrange local and global market structures, leading to the disruption of existing profit pools, creating the possibility of massive economic impact. Disruptive technologies can lead to the devaluation of various forms of labor power, up to the point of making human labor power economically noncompetitive in certain applications, potentially widening income inequality. According to Marx, escalating tension between the upper and lower class is a major consequence of technology decreasing the value of labor force and the contradictory effect an evolving means of production has on established social and economic systems. Marx believed increasing inequality between the upper and lower classes acts as a major catalyst of class conflicts, which develop to a point where the existing mode of production inevitably becomes unsustainable, either collapsing or being overthrown in a social revolution, at which point the contradictory relationship between technological advancement and the value of labor force is resolved by the emergence of a new mode of production based on a different set of social relations including, most notably, different patterns of ownership for the means of production. Ownership of the means of production and control over the surplus product generated by their operation is the fundamental factor in delineating different modes of production. Capitalism is defined as private ownership and control over the means of production, where the surplus product becomes a source of unearned income for its owners. Under this system, profit-seeking individuals or organizations undertake a majority of economic activities. However, capitalism does not indicate all material means of production are privately owned as partial economies are publicly owned. By contrast, socialism is defined as social ownership of the means of production so that the surplus product accrues to society at large. Determinant of class Marx's theory of class defines classes in their relation to their ownership and control of the means of production. In a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie, or the capitalist class, is the class that owns the means of production and derives a passive income from their operation. Examples of the capitalist class include business owners, shareholders and the minority of people who own factories, machinery and lands. Countries considered as the capitalist countries include Australia, Canada, the U.S., and other nations which hold a free market economy. In modern society, small business owners, minority shareholders and other smaller capitalists are considered as Petite bourgeoisie according to Marx's theory, which is distinct from bourgeoisie and proletariat as they can buy the labour of others but also work along with employees. In contrast, the proletariat, or working class, comprises the majority of the population that lacks access to the means of production and are therefore induced to sell their labour power for a wage or salary to gain access to necessities, goods and services. According to Marx, wages and salaries are considered as the price of labour power, related to working hours or outputs produced by the labour force. At the company level, an employee does not control and own the means of production in a capitalist mode of production. Instead, an employee is performing specific duties under a contract of employment, working for wages or salaries. As for firms and profit-seeking organizations, from a personnel economics perspective, to maximize efficiency and productivity there must be an equilibrium between labour markets and product markets. In human resource practices, compensation structure tends to shift towards pay-for-performance bonus or incentive pay rather than base salary to attract the right workers, even if conflicts of interest exist in an employer-worker relationship. To the question of why classes exist in human societies in the first place, Karl Marx offered a historical and scientific explanation that it was the cultural practice of ownership of the means of production that gives rise to them. This explanation differs dramatically from other explanations based on "differences in ability" between individuals or on religious or political affiliations giving rise to castes. This explanation is consistent with the bulk of Marxist theory in which Politics and Religion are seen as mere outgrowths (superstructures) of the basic underlying economic reality of a people. Related terms Factors of production are defined by German philosopher Karl Marx in his book Das Kapital as labor, subjects of labor, and instruments of labor: the term is equivalent to means of production plus labor. The factors of production are often listed in economic writings derived from the classical school as "land, labour and capital". Marx sometimes used the term "productive forces" equivalently with "factors of production"; in Kapital, he uses "factors of production", in his famous Preface to his Critique of Political Economy: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he uses "productive forces" (that may depend on the translation). Production relations (German: Produktionsverhältnis) are the relations humans enter into with each other in using the means of production to produce. Examples of such relations are employer/employee, buyer/seller, the technical division of labour in a factory, and property relations. Mode of production (German: Produktionsweise) means the dominant way in which production is organised in society. For instance, "capitalism" is the name for the capitalist mode of production in which the means of production are owned privately by a small class (the bourgeoisie) who profits off the labor of the working class (the proletariat). Communism is a mode of production in which the means of production are not owned by anyone, but shared in common, without class-based exploitation. Besides capitalism and communism, there is another mode of production which is called a Mixed Economic System. In a mixed economy, private ownership of capital goods are protected and a certain level of the market economy is allowed. However, the government has the right to intervene in the market and economic activities for social objectives. Different from the pure capitalism, the government regulation exists to control particular means of production over the private business sector. Different from communism, the majority of means of production are privately owned rather than shared in common. See also Capital (economics) Clause IV Factors of production Information revolution Gross fixed capital formation Nationalization Productive forces Property Private property Privatization Relations of production Socialization (economics) Footnotes Nolan P. K Lenski 2009 References Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. (1957). Political Economy: A Textbook. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Marxist terminology Communism Socialism Capitalism Marxian economics Production economics Labour economics Capital (economics) Factors of production

Democracy Ranking

The Democracy Ranking is an index compiled by the Association for Development and Advancement of the Democracy Award, an Austria-based non-partisan organization. Democracy Ranking produces an annual global ranking of liberal democracies. The applied conceptual formula, which measures the quality of democracy, integrates democracy and other characteristics of the political system with the performance of non-political dimensions (gender, economy, knowledge, health, and environment). Democracy Ranking has emphasized a broader understanding of democracy, creating a conceptual link between politics and the output and performance of society. The Democracy Ranking has compared several-year intervals, delivering ranking results, which show how ranking positions and score levels have developed recently. Referring to that information, a Democracy Improvement Ranking has been regularly released. Ranking 2016 Source: Vision "The Democracy Ranking is interested in contributing to the global enhancement of the Quality of Democracy in a world-wide understanding and approach." Theory, conceptual formula and methodology The Democracy Ranking initiative applies the following conceptual formula for defining democracy and measuring the quality of democracy: Quality of Democracy = (freedom & other characteristics of the political system) & (performance of the non-political dimensions). This approach includes also the output of democracies. Democracy Ranking refers to countries (country-based democracies) with a population of one million or more and that are classified by Freedom House as "free" or at least as "partly free" (see also the Freedom House report). The Democracy Ranking makes explicit the "theoretical basis", which governs the theoretical self-understanding of the Democracy Ranking. The Democracy Ranking understands and measures democracies in a multi-dimensional framework and approach. By this, the Democracy Ranking contributes to a further development of measurement of democracy. According to the ranking, democracy consists of six dimensions (one political, five non-political), with different weights for the overall quality of democracy. Their weights are distributed accordingly: politics (or the political system) 50%; gender (gender equality in socioeconomic and educational terms) 10%; economy (or the economic system) 10%; knowledge (knowledge society, research and education) 10%; health (or the health system and health status) 10%; and environment (environmental sustainability) 10%. The theoretical basis of the Democracy Ranking encourages a broader approach for explaining and measuring democracy while covering and integrating non-political dimensions. This is enabled by an understanding that democracy represents not only a concept of the political system, but also a concept that extends to society and the context of society, and includes interfaces between politics, society, economy, and even the environment. Politics (policy) has or should have a responsibility for economic (socioeconomic) performance. Furthermore, there is also a need that democracy reflects the context of the (natural) environment. Concepts of democracy turn out to be more demanding, the more they move from a mainly electoral democracy (emphasizing elections and political rights) to a liberal democracy (also encompassing civil liberties), and further extending to a liberal democracy of an advanced high quality. In that logic, the Democracy Ranking reflects and requires a "demanding type" of democracy. Methodically, the Democracy Ranking does not create new indicators, but relies on already existing indicators that are being released regularly by renowned international and/or private non-profit organizations. The Democracy Ranking draws on available indicators according to a distinct conceptual formula and six-fold dimensional structure, thus providing a theoretically based conceptual design (a basic concept) of how to combine and aggregate these indicators. Depending on the source, the content of the indicators varies, extending from peer review assessment (Democracy indices) to indicators that capture performance (e.g., socioeconomic behavior). The Democracy Ranking initiative acknowledges the work of organizations such as Freedom House, the World Bank, and also the United Nations Development Program (more specifically the Human Development Index). Reflections on the Democracy Ranking The work of the Democracy Ranking is being reflected in academic discourse and in coverage by international media. Democracy Ranking The Democracy Ranking analyzes several-year intervals, revealing relative ranking positions as well as changes of score levels over time. Typically, more than hundred countries are being compared in context of a specific Democracy Ranking. Based on ranking results and their shifts, a Democracy Improvement Ranking is being carried out, with a full result release. The Democracy Improvement Ranking places the emphasis on increases or decreases of the ranking scores of democracies. Individual annual rankings of the Democracy Ranking are also published in separate book volumes. See also References External links Official links Democracy Ranking Democracy Ranking 2014 Democracy Improvement Ranking 2014 Democracy Indexes Research institutes in Austria

Digital citizen

The term digital citizen is used with different meanings. According to the definition provided by Karen Mossberger, one of the authors of Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, digital citizens are "those who use the internet regularly and effectively." In this sense, a digital citizen is a person using information technology (IT) in order to engage in society, politics, and government. More recent elaborations of the concept define digital citizenship as the self-enactment of people’s role in society through the use of digital technologies, stressing the empowering and democratizing characteristics of the citizenship idea. These theories aim at taking into account the ever increasing datafication of contemporary societies (as can be symbolically linked to the Snowden leaks), which radically called into question the meaning of “being (digital) citizens in a datafied society”, also referred to as the “algorithmic society”, which is characterised by the increasing datafication of social life and the pervasive presence of surveillance practices – see surveillance and surveillance capitalism, the use of Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data. Datafication presents crucial challenges for the very notion of citizenship, so that data collection can no longer be seen as an issue of privacy alone so that:We cannot simply assume that being a citizen online already means something (whether it is the ability to participate or the ability to stay safe) and then look for those whose conduct conforms to this meaning Instead, the idea of digital citizenship shall reflect the idea that we are no longer mere “users” of technologies since they shape our agency both as individuals and as citizens. Digital citizenship is the responsible and respectful use of technology to engage online, find reliable sources, and protect and promote human rights. It teaches skills to communicate, collaborate, and act positively on any online platform. It also teaches empathy, privacy protection, and security measures to prevent data breaches and identity theft. Digital citizenship in the "algorithmic society" In the context of the algorithmic society, the question of digital citizenship "becomes one of the extents to which subjects are able to challenge, avoid or mediate their data double in this datafied society”. These reflections put the emphasis on the idea of the digital space (or cyberspace) as a political space where the respect of fundamental rights of the individual shall be granted (with reference both to the traditional ones as well as to new specific rights of the internet [see “digital constitutionalism”]) and where the agency and the identity of the individuals as citizens is at stake. This idea of digital citizenship is thought to be not only active but also performative, in the sense that “in societies that are increasingly mediated through digital technologies, digital acts become important means through which citizens create, enact and perform their role in society.” In particular, for Isin and Ruppert this points towards an active meaning of (digital) citizenship based on the idea that we constitute ourselves as digital citizen by claiming rights on the internet, either by saying or by doing something. Types of digital participation People who characterize themselves as digital citizens often use IT extensively—creating blogs, using social networks, and participating in online journalism. Although digital citizenship begins when any child, teen, or adult signs up for an email address, posts pictures online, uses e-commerce to buy merchandise online, and/or participates in any electronic function that is B2B or B2C, the process of becoming a digital citizen goes beyond simple internet activity. According to Thomas Humphrey Marshall, a British sociologist known for his work on social citizenship, a primary framework of citizenship comprises three different traditions: liberalism, republicanism, and ascriptive hierarchy. Within this framework, the digital citizen needs to exist in order to promote equal economic opportunities and increase political participation. In this way, digital technology helps to lower the barriers to entry for participation as a citizen within a society. They also have a comprehensive understanding of digital citizenship, which is the appropriate and responsible behavior when using technology. Since digital citizenship evaluates the quality of an individual's response to membership in a digital community, it often requires the participation of all community members, both visible and those who are less visible. A large part in being a responsible digital citizen encompasses digital literacy, etiquette, online safety, and an acknowledgement of private versus public information. The development of digital citizen participation can be divided into two main stages. The first stage is through information dissemination, which includes subcategories of its own: static information dissemination, characterized largely by citizens who use read-only websites where they take control of data from credible sources in order to formulate judgments or facts. Many of these websites where credible information may be found are provided by the government. dynamic information dissemination, which is more interactive and involves citizens as well as public servants. Both questions and answers can be communicated, and citizens have the opportunity to engage in question-and-answer dialogues through two-way communication platforms The second stage of digital citizen participation is citizen deliberation, which evaluates what type of participation and role that they play when attempting to ignite some sort of policy change. static citizen participants can play a role by engaging in online polls as well as through complaints and recommendations sent up, mainly toward the government who can create changes in policy decisions. dynamic citizen participants can deliberate amongst others on their thoughts and recommendations in town hall meetings or various media sites. One of the primary advantages of participating in online debates through digital citizenship is that it incorporates social inclusion. In a report on civic engagement, citizen-powered democracy can be initiated either through information shared through the web, direct communication signals made by the state toward the public, and social media tactics from both private and public companies. In fact, it was found that the community-based nature of social media platforms allow individuals to feel more socially included and informed about political issues that peers have also been found to engage with, otherwise known as a "second-order effect." Understanding strategic marketing on social media would further explain social media customers’ participation. Two types of opportunities rise as a result, the first being the ability to lower barriers that can make exchanges much easier. In addition, they have the chance to participate in transformative disruption, giving people who have a historically lower political engagement to mobilize in a much easier and convenient fashion. Nonetheless, there are several challenges that face the presence of digital technologies in political participation. Both current as well as potential challenges can create significant risks for democratic processes. Not only is digital technology still seen as relatively ambiguous, it was also seen to have "less inclusivity in democratic life." Demographic groups differ considerably in the use of technology, and thus, one group could potentially be more represented than another as a result of digital participation. Another primary challenge consists in the ideology of a "filter bubble" effect. Alongside a tremendous spread of false information, internet users could reinforce existing prejudices and assist in polarizing disagreements in the public sphere. This can lead to misinformed voting and decisions based on exposure rather than on pure knowledge. A communication technology director, Van Dijk, stated, "Computerized information campaigns and mass public information systems have to be designed and supported in such a way that they help to narrow the gap between the 'information rich' and 'information poor' otherwise the spontaneous development of ICT will widen it." Access and equivalent amounts of knowledge behind digital technology must be equivalent in order for a fair system to put into place. Alongside a lack of evidenced support for technology that can be proven to be safe for citizens, the OECD has identified five struggles for the online engagement of citizens: Scale: To what extent can a society allow every individual's voice to be heard, but also not be lost in the mass debate? This can be extremely challenging for the government, which may not effectively know how to listen and respond to each individual contribution. Capacity: How can digital technology offer citizens more information on public policy-making? The opportunity for citizens to debate with one another is lacking for active citizenship. Coherence: The government is yet to design a more holistic view of the policy-making cycle and the use of design technology to better prepare information from citizens in each stage of the policy-making cycle. Evaluation: There is a greater need now than ever before to figure out whether or not the online engagement can help meet the citizen as well as the government's objectives. Commitment: Is the government committed to analyze and use citizen's public input, and how can this process be validated more regularly? Developed states and developing countries Highly developed states possess the capacity to link their respective governments with digital sites. Such sites function in ways such as publicizing recent legislation, current, and future policy objectives; lending agency toward political candidates; and/or allowing citizens to voice themselves in a political way. Likewise, the emergence of these sites has been linked to increased voting advocacy. Lack of access to technology can be a serious obstacle in becoming a digital citizen, since many elementary procedures such as tax report filing, birth registration, and use of websites to support candidates in political campaigns (e-democracy) have become available solely via the internet. Furthermore, many cultural and commercial entities only publicize information on web pages. Non-digital citizens will not be able to retrieve this information, and this may lead to social isolation or economic stagnation. The gap between digital citizens and non-digital citizens is often referred as the digital divide. In developing countries, digital citizens are fewer. They consist of the people who use technology to overcome local obstacles including development issues, corruption, and even military conflict. Examples of such citizens include users of Ushahidi during the 2007 disputed Kenyan election and protesters in the Arab Spring movements who used media to document repression of protests. Currently, the digital divide is a subject of academic debate as access to the internet has increased in these developing countries, but the place in which it is accessed (work, home, public library, etc.) has a significant effect on how much access will be used, if even in a manner related to the citizenry. Recent scholarship has correlated the desire to be technologically proficient with greater belief in computer access equity, and thus, digital citizenship (Shelley, et al.). On the other side of the divide, one example of a highly developed digital technology program in a wealthy state is the e-Residency of Estonia. This form of digital residency allows both citizens and non-citizens of the state to pursue business opportunities in a digital business environment. The application is simple; residents can fill out a form with their passport and photograph alongside the reason for applying. Following a successful application, the "e-residency" will allow them to register a company, sign documents, make online banking declarations, and file medical prescriptions online, though they will be tracked through financial footprints. The project plans to cover over 10 million e-residents by 2025 and there were over 54,000 participants from over 162 countries that have expressed an interest, contributing millions of dollars to the country's economy and assisting in access to any public service online. Other benefits include hassle-free administration, lower business costs, access to the European Union market, and a broad range of e-services. Though the program is designed for entrepreneurs, Estonia hopes to value transparency and resourcefulness as a cause for other companies to implement similar policies domestically. In 2021, Estonia's neighbor Lithuania launched a similar e-Residency program. Nonetheless, Estonia's e-Residency system has been subject to criticism. Many have pointed out that tax treaties within their own countries will play a major role in preventing this idea from spreading to more countries. Another risk is politically for governments to sustain "funding and legislative priorities across different coalitions of power." Most importantly, the threat of cyberattacks may disrupt the seemingly optimal idea of having a platform for eIDs, as Estonia suffered its own massive cyberattack in 2007 by Russian hacktivists. Today, the protection of digital services and databases is essential to national security, and many countries are still hesitant to take the next step forward to promote a new system that will change the scale of politics with all its citizens. Other forms of digital divide Within developed countries, the digital divide, other than economic differences, is attributed to educational levels. A study conducted by the United States National Telecommunications and Information Administration determined that the gap in computer usage and internet access widened 7.8% and 25% between those with the most and least educated, and it has been observed that those with college degrees or higher are 10 times more likely to have internet access at work when compared with those with only a high school education. A digital divide often extends along specific racial lines as well. The difference in computer usage grew by 39.2% between White and Black households and by 42.6% between White and Hispanic households only three years ago. Race can also affect the number of computers at school, and as expected, gaps between racial groups narrow at higher income levels while widening among households at lower economic levels. Racial disparities have been proven to exist irrespective of income, and in a cultural study to determine reasons for the divide other than income, in accordance to the Hispanic community, computers were seen as a luxury, not a need. Participants collectively stated that computer activities isolated individuals and took away valuable time from family activities. In the African-American community, it was observed that they historically have had negative encounters with technological innovations, and with Asian-Americans, education was emphasized, and thus, there was a larger number of people who embraced the rise in technological advances. An educational divide also takes place as a result of differences in the use of daily technology. In a report analyzed by the ACT Center for Equity in Learning, "85% of respondents reported having access to anywhere from two to five devices at home. The remaining one percent of respondents reported having access to no devices at home." For the 14% of respondents with one device at home, many of them reported the need to share these devices with other household members, facing challenges that are often overlooked. The data all suggest that wealthier families have access to more devices. In addition, out of the respondents that only used one device at home, 24% of them lived in rural areas, and over half reported that this one device was a smartphone; this could make completing schoolwork assignments more difficult. The ACT recommended that underserved students need access to more devices and higher-quality networks, and educators should do their best to ensure that students can find as many electronic materials through their phones to not place a burden on family plans. Engagement of youth A recent survey revealed that teenagers and young adults spend more time on the internet than watching TV. This has raised a number of concerns about how internet use could impact cognitive abilities. According to a study by Wartella et al., teens are concerned about how digital technologies may have an impact on their health. Digital youth can generally be viewed as the test market for the next generation's digital content and services. Sites such as Myspace and Facebook have come to the fore in sites where youth participate and engage with others on the internet. However, due to the lack of popularity of MySpace in particular, more young people are turning to websites such as Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube. It was reported that teenagers spend up to nine hours a day online, with the vast majority of that time spent on social media websites from mobile devices, contributing to the ease of access and availability to young people. Vast amounts of money are spent annually to research the demographic by hiring psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists in order to discover habits, values and fields of interest. Particularly in the United States, "Social media use has become so pervasive in the lives of American teens that having a presence on a social network is almost synonymous with being online; 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites". However, movements such as these appear to benefit strictly those wishing to advocate for their business towards youth. The critical time when young people are developing their civic identities is between the ages 15–22. During this time they develop three attributes, civic literacy, civic skills and civic attachment, that constitute civic engagement later reflected in political actions of their adult lives. For youth to fully participate and realize their presence on the internet, a quality level of reading comprehension is required. "The average government web site, for example, requires an eleventh-grade level of reading comprehension, even though about half of the U.S. population reads at an eighth-grade level or lower". So despite the internet being a place irrespective of certain factors such as race, religion, and class, education plays a large part in a person's capacity to present themselves online in a formal manner conducive towards their citizenry. Concurrently, education also affects people's motivation to participate online. Students should be encouraged to use technology with responsibility and ethical digital citizenship promoted. Education on harmful viruses and other malware must be emphasized to protect resources. A student can be a successful digital citizen with the help of educators, parents, and school counselors. These 5 competencies will assist and support teachers in teaching about digital citizenship: Inclusive I am open to hearing and respectfully recognizing multiple viewpoints and I engage with others online with respect and empathy. Informed I evaluate the accuracy, perspective, and validity of digital media and social posts. Engaged I use technology and digital channels for civic engagement, to solve problems and be a force for good in both physical and virtual communities. Balanced I make informed decisions about how to prioritize my time and activities online and off. Alert I am aware of my online actions, and know how to be safe and create safe spaces for others online. Limits on the use of data International OECD guidelines state that "personal data should be relevant to the purposes for which they are to be used, and to the extent necessary for those purposes should be accurate, complete, and kept up to date". Article 8 prevents subjects to certain exceptions. Meaning that certain things cannot be published online revealing race, ethnicity, religion, political stance, health, and sex life. in the United States, this is enforced generally by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)- but very generally. For example, the FTC brought an action against Microsoft for failing to properly protect customers' personal information. In addition, many have described the United States as being in a cyberwar with Russia, and several Americans have credited Russia to their country's downfall in transparency and declining trust in the government. With several foreign users posting anonymous information through social media in order to gather a following, it is difficult to understand whom to target and what affiliation or root cause they may have of performing a particular action aimed to sway public opinion. The FTC does play a significant role in protecting the digital citizen. However, individuals' public records are increasingly useful to the government and highly sought after. This material can help the government detect a variety of crimes such as fraud, drug distribution rings, terrorist cells. it makes it easier to properly profile a suspected criminal and keep an eye on them. Although there are a variety of ways to gather information on an individual through credit card history, employment history, and more, the internet is becoming the most desirable information gatherer thanks to its façade of security and the amount of information that can be stored on the internet. Anonymity has proven to be very rare online as ISPs can keep track of an individual's activity online. Three principles of digital citizenship Digital citizenship is a term used to define the appropriate and responsible use of technology among users. Three principles were developed by Mike Ribble to teach digital users how to responsibly use technology to become a digital citizen: respect, educate, and protect. Each principle contains three of the nine elements of digital citizenship. Respect: the elements of etiquette, access, and law are used to respect other digital users. Educate: the elements of literacy, communication, and commerce are used to learn about the appropriate use of the digital world. Protect: the elements of rights and responsibilities, security, and health and wellness are used to remain safe in the digital and non-digital world. Within these three core principles, there are nine elements to also be considered in regards to digital citizenship: Digital access: This is perhaps one of the most fundamental blocks to being a digital citizen. However, due to socioeconomic status, location, and other disabilities, some individuals may not have digital access. Recently, schools have been becoming more connected with the internet, often offering computers, and other forms of access. This can be offered through kiosks, community centers, and open labs. This most often is associated with the digital divide and factors associated with such. Digital access is available in many remote countries via cyber cafés and small coffee shops. Digital commerce: This is the ability for users to recognize that much of the economy is regulated online. It also deals with the understanding of the dangers and benefits of online buying, using credit cards online, and so forth. As with the advantages and legal activities- there is also dangerous activities such as illegal downloads, gambling, drug deals, pornography, plagiarism, and so forth. Digital communication: This element deals with understanding the variety of online communication mediums such as email, instant messaging, Facebook Messenger, and so forth. There is a standard of etiquette associated with each medium. Digital literacy: This deals with the understanding of how to use various digital devices. For example, how to properly search for something on a search engine versus an online database, or how to use various online logs. Oftentimes many educational institutions will help form an individual's digital literacy. Digital etiquette: As discussed in the third element, digital communication, this is the expectation that various mediums require a variety of etiquette. Certain mediums demand more appropriate behavior and language than others. Digital law: This is where enforcement occurs for illegal downloads, plagiarizing, hacking, creating viruses, sending spam, identity theft, cyberbullying, etc. Digital rights and responsibilities: This is the set of rights that digital citizens have, such as privacy and free speech. Digital health: Digital citizens must be aware of the physical stress placed on their bodies by internet usage. They must be aware to not become overly dependent on the internet causing problems such as eye strain, headaches, and stress. Digital security: This simply means that citizens must take measures to be safe by practicing using secure passwords, virus protection, backing up data, and so forth. Digital citizenship in education According to Mike Ribble, an author who has worked on the topic of digital citizenship for more than a decade, digital access is the first element that is prevalent in today's educational curriculum. He cited a widening gap between the impoverished and the wealthy, as 41% of African Americans and Hispanics use computers in the home when compared to 77% of white students. Other crucial digital elements include commerce, communication, literacy, and etiquette. He also emphasized that educators must understand that technology is important for all students, not only those who already have access to it, in order to decrease the digital divide that currently exists. Furthermore, in research brought up by Common Sense Media, approximately six out of ten American K-12 teachers used some type of digital citizenship curriculum, and seven out of ten taught some sort of competency skill utilizing digital citizenship. Many of the sections that these teachers focused in on included hate speech, cyberbullying, and digital drama. A problem with digital technology that still exists is that over 35% of students were observed to not possess the proper skills to critically evaluate information online, and these issues and statistics increased as the grade levels rose. Online videos such as those found on YouTube and Netflix have been used approximately by 60% of the K-12 teachers in classrooms, while educational tools such as Microsoft Office and Google G Suite have been used by around half of the teachers. Social media was used the least, at around 13% in comparison to other digital methods of education. When analyzing the social class differences between schools, it was found that Title I schools were more likely to use digital citizenship curricula than teachers in more affluent schools. In the past two years, there has been a major shift to move students from digital citizenship to digital leadership in order to make a greater impact on online interactions. Though digital citizens take a responsible approach to act ethically, digital leadership is a more proactive approach, encompassing the "use of internet and social media to improve the lives, well-being, and circumstances of others" as part of one's daily life. In February 2018, after the Valentine's Day shooting in Parkland, Florida, students became dynamic digital citizens, using social media and other web platforms to engage proactively on the issue and push back against cyberbullies and misinformation. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School specifically rallied against gun violence, engaging in live tweeting, texting, videoing, and recording the attack as it happened, utilizing onside digital tools to not only witness what was happening at the time but to allow the world to witness it as well. This allowed the nation to see and react, and as a result, students built a web page and logo for their new movement. They gave interviews to major media outlets and at rallies and protects and coordinated a nationwide march online on March 24 against elected officials at meetings and town halls. The idea of this shift in youth is to express empathy beyond one's self, and moving to seeing this self in the digital company of others. Nonetheless, several critics state that just as empathy can be spread to a vast number of individuals, hatred can be spread as well. Though the United Nations and groups have been establishing fronts against hate speech, there is no legal definition of hate speech used internationally, and more research needs to be done on its impact. Along with educational trends, there are overlapping goals of digital citizenship education. Altogether, these facets contribute to one another in the development of a healthy and effective education for digital technology and communication. Digital footprint: An acknowledgment that posting and receiving information online can be tracked, customized, and marketed for users to click and follow. Not only the internet use but individuals' digital footprints can lead to both beneficial and negative outcomes, but the ability to manage one's digital footprints can be a sub-part of digital literacy. Digital footprints do not simply consist of the active participation of content production as well as sharing of ideas on different media sites, but they can also be generated by other internet users (both active and passive forms of digital participation). Examples of digital footprints includes liking, favoriting, following, or commenting on a certain online content creation, or other data can be found by searching through history, purchases, and searches. Digital literacy: Almost 20 years ago, Gilster (1997) defined digital literacy as "the ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers." Digital literacy includes the locating and consumption of content online, the creation of content, and the way that this content is communicated amongst a group of people. Information literacy: The American Library Association defines information literacy as the overall ability for an individual to target information that is valuable, being able to find it, evaluate it, and use it. This can be through information creation, research, scholarly conversations, or simply plugging in keywords into a search engine. Copyright, intellectual property respect, attribution: By knowing who published sources and whether or not content creation is credible, users can be better educated as to what and what not to believe when engaging in digital participation. Health and wellness: A healthy community allows for an interactive conversation to take place between educated citizens who are knowledgeable about their environment. Empowering student voice, agency, advocacy: Utilizing nonprofits as well as government-affiliated organizations in order to empower students to speak up for policy changes that need to be made. Currently, more than 10 different mobile applications aim to allow students the opportunity to speak up and advocate for rights online. Safety, security and privacy: Addressing freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world and the balance between the right to privacy and the safety hazards that go along with it. This area of digital citizenship includes the assistance of students to understand when they are provided the right opportunities, including the proper access to the internet and products that are sold online. It is on the part of educators to assist students in understanding that it is crucial to protect others online. Character education and ethics: Knowing that ethically speaking, everyone will come with different viewpoints online and it is crucial to remain balanced and moral in online behavior. Parenting: Emphasizing the efforts of educators, many want to continue preaching rules and policies addressing issues related to the online world. Cyberbullying, sexting, and other negative issues that are brought up are regulated by the School Resource Officers and other school counsel. Parents posting about their kids online: Digital footprints has lasting impacts on a reputation that can affect relationships, employment, opportunities. For example, negatively, a post can impact a child's college admissions or ruin relationship. However, positively, a post could influence their future or help their relationship. Parent tend to post their child picture, achievement, ultrasound, or even flyer. However, "technology coupled with parents’ behavior is increasingly putting children at risk for identity theft, humiliation, various privacy violations, future discrimination, and causing concern about developmental issues related to autonomy and consent." Though the posts are innocent and positive, parents still can the biggest invaders of privacy when it come to their child. Digital Citizenship Curricula There are free and open curricula developed by different organizations for teaching Digital Citizenship skills in schools: Be Internet Awesome: Developed by Google in collaboration with The Net Safety Collaborative, and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition. Digital Citizenship Curriculum: Developed by Common Sense Media, licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND. Open Curriculum for Teaching Digital Citizenship & Internet Maturity: Developed by iMature EdTech, licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND. See also Civic technology Digital integrity Digital self-determination E-government Open government Service design Netizen Digital native Digital Literacy References 51. Baron, Jessica. “Posting about Your Kids Online Could Damage Their Futures.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 24 Mar. 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicabaron/2018/12/16/parents-who-post-about-their-kids-online-could-be-damaging-their-futures/?sh=34d59a4427b7. 1 . Hollebeek, Linda. “Exploring Customer Brand Engagement: Definition and Themes.” Journal of Strategic Marketing, vol. 19, no. 7, Dec. 2011, pp. 555–73. Taylor and Francis+NEJM, https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2011.599493. External links Take the Safe Online Surfing Internet Challenge (FBI) What Is Digital Citizenship & How Do You Teach It? Digital technology Internet governance Information revolution Information society Information Age Digital divide Internet ethics Digital media Youth-led media

Corporatism

Corporatism is a political system of interest representation and policymaking whereby corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, come together on and negotiate contracts or policy (collective bargaining) on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "body". Corporatism does not refer to a political system dominated by large business interests, even though the latter are commonly referred to as "corporations" in modern American vernacular and legal parlance; instead, the correct term for this theoretical system would be corporatocracy. Corporatism is not government corruption in politics or the use of bribery by corporate interest groups. The terms 'corporatocracy' and 'corporatism' are often confused due to their name and the use of corporations as organs of the state. Corporatism developed during the 1850s in response to the rise of classical liberalism and Marxism, as it advocated cooperation between the classes instead of class conflict. Adherents of diverse ideologies, including communism, economic liberalism, fascism, and socialism have advocated for corporatist models. Corporatism became one of the main tenets of Italian fascism, and Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy advocated the total integration of divergent interests into the state for the common good; however, the more democratic neo-corporatism often embraced tripartism. Corporatist ideas have been expressed since ancient Greek and Roman societies, with integration into Catholic social teaching and Christian democratic political parties. They have been paired by various advocates and implemented in various societies with a wide variety of political systems, including authoritarianism, absolutism, fascism, liberalism, and social democracy. Kinship corporatism Kinship-based corporatism emphasizing clan, ethnic and family identification has been a common phenomenon in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Confucian societies based upon families and clans in Eastern and Southeast Asia have been considered types of corporatism. Islamic societies often feature strong clans which form the basis for a community-based corporatist society. Family businesses are common worldwide in capitalist societies. Politics and political economy Communitarian corporatism Early concepts of corporatism evolved in Classical Greece. Plato developed the concept of a totalitarian and communitarian corporatist system of natural-based classes and natural social hierarchies that would be organized based on function, such that groups would cooperate to achieve social harmony by emphasizing collective interests while rejecting individual interests. In Politics, Aristotle described society as being divided between natural classes and functional purposes: those of priests, rulers, slaves and warriors. Ancient Rome adopted Greek concepts of corporatism into its own version of corporatism, adding the concept of political representation on the basis of function that divided representatives into military, professional and religious groups and set up institutions for each group known as collegia. After the 5th-century fall of Rome and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, corporatist organizations in western Europe became largely limited to religious orders and to the idea of Christian brotherhood — especially within the context of economic transactions. From the High Middle Ages onward, corporatist organizations became increasingly common in Europe, including such groups as religious orders, monasteries, fraternities, military orders such as the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Order, educational organizations such as the emerging European universities and learned societies, the chartered towns and cities, and most notably the guild system which dominated the economies of population centers in Europe. The military orders notably gained prominence during the period of the Crusades. These corporatist systems co-existed with the governing medieval estates system, and members of the first estate (the clergy), the second estate (the aristocracy), and third estate (the common people) could also participate in various corporatist bodies. The development of the guild system involved the guilds gaining the power to regulate trade and prices, and guild members included artisans, tradesmen, and other professionals. This diffusion of power is an important aspect of corporatist economic models of economic management and class collaboration. However, from the 16th century onward, absolute monarchies began to conflict with the diffuse, decentralized powers of the medieval corporatist bodies. Absolute monarchies during the Renaissance and Enlightenment gradually subordinated corporatist systems and corporate groups to the authority of centralized and absolutist governments, removing any checks on royal power these corporatist bodies had previously utilized. After the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789), the existing absolutist corporatist system in France was abolished due to its endorsement of social hierarchy and special "corporate privilege". The new French government considered corporatism's emphasis on group rights as inconsistent with the government's promotion of individual rights. Subsequently, corporatist systems and corporate privilege throughout Europe were abolished in response to the French Revolution. From 1789 to the 1850s, most supporters of corporatism were reactionaries. A number of reactionary corporatists favoured corporatism in order to end liberal capitalism and to restore the feudal system. Countering the reactionaries were the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760- 1825), whose proposed "industrial class" would have had the representatives of various economic groups sit in the political chambers, in contrast to the popular representation of liberal democracy. Progressive corporatism From the 1850s onward, progressive corporatism developed in response to classical liberalism and to Marxism. Progressive corporatists supported providing group rights to members of the middle classes and working classes in order to secure co-operation among the classes. This was in opposition to the Marxist conception of class conflict. By the 1870s and 1880s, corporatism experienced a revival in Europe with the formation of workers' unions that were committed to negotiations with employers. In his 1887 work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ("Community and Society"), Ferdinand Tönnies began a major revival of corporatist philosophy associated with the development of neo-medievalism, increasing promotion of guild socialism and causing major changes to theoretical sociology. Tönnies claims that organic communities based upon clans, communes, families and professional groups are disrupted by the mechanical society of economic classes imposed by capitalism. The German Nazi Party used Tönnies' theory to promote their notion of Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community"). However, Tönnies opposed Nazism: he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1932 to oppose fascism in Germany and was deprived of his honorary professorship by Adolf Hitler in 1933. Corporatism in the Roman Catholic Church In 1881, Pope Leo XIII commissioned theologians and social thinkers to study corporatism and to provide a definition for it. In 1884 in Freiburg, the commission declared that corporatism was a "system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest". Corporatism is related to the sociological concept of structural functionalism. Corporatism's popularity increased in the late 19th century and a corporatist internationale was formed in 1890, followed by the 1891 publishing of Rerum novarum by the Catholic Church that for the first time declared the Church's blessing to trade unions and recommended that politicians recognize organized labour. Many corporatist unions in Europe were endorsed by the Catholic Church to challenge the anarchist, Marxist and other radical unions, with the corporatist unions being fairly conservative in comparison to their radical rivals. Some Catholic corporatist states include Austria under the 1932–1934 leadership of Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss and Ecuador under the leadership of García Moreno (1861–1865 and 1869–1875). The economic vision outlined in Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno (1931) also influenced the régime (1946–1955 and 1973–1974) of Juan Perón and Justicialism in Argentina and influenced the drafting of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. In response to the Roman Catholic corporatism of the 1890s, Protestant corporatism developed, especially in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. However, Protestant corporatism has been much less successful in obtaining assistance from governments than its Roman Catholic counterpart. Corporate solidarism Sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) advocated a form of corporatism termed "solidarism" that advocated creating an organic social solidarity of society through functional representation. Solidarism built on Durkheim's view that the dynamic of human society as a collective is distinct from the dynamic of an individual, in that society is what places upon individuals their cultural and social attributes. Durkheim posited that solidarism would alter the division of labour by evolving it from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. He believed that the existing industrial capitalist division of labour caused "juridical and moral anomie", which had no norms or agreed procedures to resolve conflicts and resulted in chronic confrontation between employers and trade unions. Durkheim believed that this anomie caused social dislocation and felt that by this "it is the law of the strongest which rules, and there is inevitably a chronic state of war, latent or acute". As a result, Durkheim believed it is a moral obligation of the members of society to end this situation by creating a moral organic solidarity based upon professions as organized into a single public institution. Corporate solidarism is a form of corporatism that advocates creating solidarity instead of collectivism in society through functional representation, believing that it is up to the people to end the chronic confrontation between employers and labor unions by creating a single public institution. Solidarism rejects a materialistic approach to social, economic, and political problems, while also rejecting class conflict. Just like corporatism, it embraces tripartism as its economic system. Liberal corporatism John Stuart Mill discussed corporatist-like economic associations as needing to "predominate" in society to create equality for labourers and to give them influence with management by economic democracy. Unlike some other types of corporatism, liberal corporatism does not reject capitalism or individualism, but believes that capitalist companies are social institutions that should require their managers to do more than maximize net income by recognizing the needs of their employees. This liberal corporatist ethic is similar to Taylorism but endorses democratization of capitalist companies. Liberal corporatists believe that inclusion of all members in the election of management in effect reconciles "ethics and efficiency, freedom and order, liberty and rationality". Liberal corporatism began to gain disciples in the United States during the late 19th century. Economic liberal corporatism involving capital-labour cooperation was influential in Fordism. Liberal corporatism has also been an influential component of the liberalism in the United States that has been referred to as "interest group liberalism". Fascist corporatism A fascist corporation can be defined as a governmental entity incorporating workers' and employers' syndicates affiliated with the same profession and sector, with the aim of overseeing production in a comprehensive manner. Theoretically, each corporation within this structure assumes the responsibility of advocating for the interests of its respective profession, particularly through the negotiation of labor agreements and similar measures. Fascists theorized that this method could result in harmony amongst social classes. In Italy, from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini. The 1920 Charter of Carnaro gained much popularity as the prototype of a "corporative state", having displayed much within its tenets as a guild system combining the concepts of autonomy and authority in a special synthesis. Alfredo Rocco spoke of a corporative state and declared corporatist ideology in detail. Rocco would later become a member of the Italian fascist régime. Subsequently, the Labour Charter of 1927 was implemented, thus establishing a collective agreement system between employers and employees, becoming the main form of class collaboration in the fascist government. Italian Fascism involved a corporatist political system in which the economy was collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level. Its supporters claimed that corporatism could better recognize or "incorporate" every divergent interest into the state organically, unlike majority-rules democracy, which (they said) could marginalize specific interests. This total consideration was the inspiration for their use of the term "totalitarian", described without coercion (which is connoted in the modern meaning) in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus: A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" ("everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state"). Within the corporative model of Italian fascism each corporate interest was supposed to be resolved and incorporated under the state. Much of the corporatist influence upon Italian fascism was partly due to the Fascists' attempts to gain endorsement by the Roman Catholic Church that itself sponsored corporatism. However, the Roman Catholic Church's corporatism favored a bottom-up corporatism, whereby groups such as families and professional groups would voluntarily work together, whereas fascist corporatism was a top-down model of state control managed primarly by government officials. The fascist state corporatism of Roman Catholic Italy influenced the governments and economies — not only of other Roman Catholic-majority countries, such as the governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal and Getúlio Vargas in Brazil — but also of Konstantin Päts and Kārlis Ulmanis in non-Catholic Estonia and Latvia. Fascists in non-Catholic countries also supported Italian Fascist corporatism, including Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists, who commended corporatism and said that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole". Mosley also regarded corporatism as an attack on laissez-faire economics and "international finance". The corporatist state of Portugal had similarities to Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist corporatism, but also differences in its moral approach to governing. Although Salazar admired Mussolini and was influenced by his Labour Charter of 1927, he distanced himself from fascist dictatorship, which he considered a pagan Caesarist political system that recognised neither legal nor moral limits. Salazar also had a strong dislike of Marxism and liberalism. In 1933, Salazar stated: "Our Dictatorship clearly resembles a fascist dictatorship in the reinforcement of authority, in the war declared against certain principles of democracy, in its accentuated nationalist character, in its preoccupation of social order. However, it differs from it in its process of renovation. The fascist dictatorship tends towards a pagan Caesarism, towards a state that knows no limits of a legal or moral order, which marches towards its goal without meeting complications or obstacles. The Portuguese New State, on the contrary, cannot avoid, not think of avoiding, certain limits of a moral order which it may consider indispensable to maintain in its favour of its reforming action". The Patriotic People's Movement (IKL) in Finland envisioned a system with elements of direct democracy and professional parliament. The president would be elected with direct vote, who would then appoint the government from among professionals in their respective fields. All parties would be banned, and members of parliament would be elected by vote from corporate groups representing different sectors; Agriculture, Industry and Public servants, free trades, etc. Every law that is passed in the parliament is either ratified or overturned by a referendum. Neo-corporatism During the post-World War II reconstruction period in Europe, corporatism was favored by Christian democrats (often under the influence of Catholic social teaching), national conservatives and social democrats in opposition to liberal capitalism. This type of corporatism became unfashionable but revived again in the 1960s and 1970s as "neo-corporatism" in response to the new economic threat of recession-inflation. Neo-corporatism is a democratic form of corporatism which favors economic tripartism, which involves strong labour unions, employers' associations and governments that cooperate as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy. Social corporatist systems instituted in Europe after World War II include the ordoliberal system of the social market economy in Germany, the social partnership in Ireland, the polder model in the Netherlands (although arguably the polder model already was present at the end of World War I, it was not until after World War II that a social-service system gained foothold there), the concertation system in Italy, the Rhine model in Switzerland and the Benelux countries and the Nordic model in the Nordic countries. Attempts in the United States to create neo-corporatist capital-labor arrangements were unsuccessfully advocated by Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. As secretary of labor during the Clinton administration, Robert Reich promoted neo-corporatist reforms. Contemporary examples by country China Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan in their essay "China, Corporatism, and the East Asian Model" describe Chinese corporatism as follows: [A]t the national level the state recognizes one and only one organization (say, a national labour union, a business association, a farmers' association) as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization's assigned constituency. The state determines which organizations will be recognized as legitimate and forms an unequal partnership of sorts with such organizations. The associations sometimes even get channelled into the policy-making processes and often help implement state policy on the government's behalf. By establishing itself as the arbiter of legitimacy and assigning responsibility for a particular constituency with one sole organization, the state limits the number of players with which it must negotiate its policies and co-opts their leadership into policing their own members. This arrangement is not limited to economic organizations such as business groups and social organizations. The political scientist Jean C. Oi coined the term "local state corporatism" to describe China's distinctive type of state-led growth, in which a communist party-state with Leninist roots commits itself to policies which are friendly to the market and to growth. The use of corporatism as a framework to understand the central state's behaviour in China has been criticized by authors such as Bruce Gilley and William Hurst. Hong Kong and Macau In two special administrative regions, some legislators are chosen by functional constituencies (Legislative Council of Hong Kong) where the voters are a mix of individuals, associations, and corporations or indirect election (Legislative Assembly of Macau) where a single association is designated to appoint legislators. Ireland Most members of the Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (parliament) of Ireland, are elected as part of vocational panels nominated partly by current Oireachtas members and partly by vocational and special interest associations. The Seanad also includes two university constituencies. The Constitution of Ireland of 1937 was influenced by Roman Catholic Corporatism as expressed in the papal encyclical, Quadragesimo anno (1931). The Netherlands Under the Dutch Polder Model, the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands (Sociaal-Economische Raad, SER) was established by the 1950 Industrial Organisation Act (Wet op de bedrijfsorganisatie). It is led by representatives of unions, employer organizations, and government appointed experts. It advises the government and has administrative and regulatory power. It oversees Sectoral Organisation Under Public Law (Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie, PBO) which are similarly organized by union and industry representatives, but for specific industries or commodities. Slovenia The Slovene National Council, the upper house of the Slovene Parliament, has 18 members elected on a corporatist basis. Western Europe Generally supported by nationalist and/or social-democratic political parties, social corporatism developed in the post-World War II period, influenced by Christian democrats and social democrats in Western European countries such as Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Social corporatism has also been adopted in different configurations and to varying degrees in various Western European countries. The Nordic countries have the most comprehensive form of collective bargaining, where trade unions are represented at the national level by official organizations alongside employers' associations. Together with the welfare state policies of these countries, this forms what is termed the Nordic model. Less extensive models exist in Austria and Germany which are components of Rhine capitalism. See also Class collaboration Co-determination Conflict theories Corporate nationalism Corporate statism Cooperative Distributism Fascism Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft Gremialismo Guild Guild socialism Holacracy Managerialism Mutualism (movement) Integralism National syndicalism Paritarian Institutions Pillarisation Solidarism (disambiguation) Third Position Proprietary corporation Notes References Black, Antony (1984). Guilds and civil society in European political thought from the twelfth century to present. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, . Further reading Acocella, N. and Di Bartolomeo, G. [2007], "Is corporatism feasible?", in: Metroeconomica, 58(2): 340-59. Jones, Eric. 2008. Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States. Oxford University Press. Jones, R. J. Barry. Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy: Entries A-F. Taylor & Frances, 2001. . Schmitter, P. (1974). "Still the Century of Corporatism?" The Review of Politics, 36(1), 85-131. Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey Progress or Order?, 2004, Syracuse University Press, On Italian corporatism Constitution of Fiume Rerum novarum: encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on capital and labor Quadragesimo Anno: encyclical of Pope Pius XI on reconstruction of the social order On fascist corporatism and its ramifications Baker, David, "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?", New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pages 227–250. Marra, Realino, "Aspetti dell'esperienza corporativa nel periodo fascista, Annali della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza di Genova, XXIV-1.2, 1991–92, pages 366–79. There is an essay on "The Doctrine of Fascism" credited to Benito Mussolini that appeared in the 1932 edition of the Enciclopedia Italiana, and excerpts can be read at Doctrine of Fascism. There are also links there to the complete text. My rise and fall, Volumes 1–2 – two autobiographies of Mussolini, editors Richard Washburn Child, Max Ascoli, Richard Lamb, Da Capo Press, 1998 The 1928 autobiography of Benito Mussolini. Online. My Autobiography. Book by Benito Mussolini; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928. . On neo-corporatism Katzenstein, Peter. Small States in World Markets: industrial policy in Europe. Ithaca, 1985. Cornell University Press. . Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. 1965, 1971. Harvard University Press. . Schmitter, P. C. and Lehmbruch, G. (eds.). Trends toward Corporatist Intermediation. London, 1979. . Rodrigues, Lucia Lima. "Corporatism, liberalism and the accounting profession in Portugal since 1755." Journal of Accounting Historians, June 2003. External links Encyclopedias Corporatism – Encyclopædia Britannica Corporatism – The Canadian Encyclopedia Articles Professor Thayer Watkins, The economic system of corporatism , San Jose State University, Department of Economics. Chip Berlet, "Mussolini on the Corporate State", 2005, Political Research Associates. "Economic Fascism" by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Freeman, Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1994, Foundation for Economic Education; Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Collectivism Economic ideologies Fascism Political systems Political theories

Euroscepticism

Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek reform (Eurorealism, Eurocritical, or soft Euroscepticism), to those who oppose EU membership and see the EU as unreformable (anti-European Unionism, anti-EUism, or hard Euroscepticism). The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as pro-Europeanism. The main drivers of Euroscepticism have been beliefs that integration undermines national sovereignty and the nation state, that the EU is elitist and lacks democratic legitimacy and transparency, that it is too bureaucratic and wasteful, that it encourages high levels of immigration, or perceptions that it is a neoliberal organisation serving the big business elite at the expense of the working class, that it is responsible for austerity, and drives privatization. Euroscepticism is found in groups across the political spectrum, both left-wing and right-wing, and is often found in populist parties. Although they criticise the EU for many of the same reasons, Eurosceptic left-wing populists focus more on economic issues, such as the European debt crisis and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, while Eurosceptic right-wing populists focus more on nationalism and immigration, such as the 2015 European migrant crisis. The rise in radical-right parties since the 2000s is strongly linked to a rise in Euroscepticism. Eurobarometer surveys of EU citizens show that trust in the EU and its institutions declined strongly from 2007 to 2015. In that period, it was consistently below 50%. A 2009 survey showed that support for EU membership was lowest in the United Kingdom (UK), Latvia, and Hungary. By 2016, the countries viewing the EU most unfavourably were the UK, Greece, France, and Spain. The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum resulted in a 51.9% vote in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit), a decision that came into effect on 31 January 2020. Since 2015, trust in the EU has risen in most EU countries as a result of falling unemployment rates and the end of the migrant crisis. A post-2019 election Eurobarometer survey showed that 68% of citizens support the EU, the highest level since 1983; however, sentiment that things are not going in the right direction in the EU had increased to 50%. Trust in the EU had increased significantly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with levels varying across member states. Reasoning The main reasons for Euroscepticism include beliefs that: integration undermines national sovereignty and the nation state; the EU is elitist and lacks democratic legitimacy and transparency; the EU is too bureaucratic and wasteful; it encourages high levels of immigration; it is a neoliberal organisation serving the big business elite at the expense of the working class the EU is responsible for austerity; the EU is responsible for driving privatization. Terminology There can be considered to be several different types of Eurosceptic thought, which differ in the extent to which adherents reject integration between member states of the EU and in their reasons for doing so. Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart described two of these as hard and soft Euroscepticism. At the same time, some scholars have said that there is no clear line between the presumed hard and soft Euroscepticism. Cas Mudde and Petr Kopecky have said that if the demarcation line is the number of and which policies a party opposes, then the question arises of how many must a party oppose and which ones should a party oppose that makes them hard Eurosceptic instead of soft. Hard Euroscepticism According to Taggart and Szczerbiak, hard Euroscepticism, or anti-EU-ism, is "a principled opposition to the EU and European integration and therefore can be seen in parties who think that their countries should withdraw from membership, or whose policies towards the EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration as it is currently conceived". The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament (2014–2019) displayed hard Euroscepticism, but following the 2019 EU elections the group was disbanded due to too few members, as its largest member, the British Brexit Party, withdrew ahead of the United Kingdom's formal exit from the EU. Some hard Eurosceptics regard their position as pragmatic rather than in principle. Additionally, Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP who fought against European integration in 1975 by opposing membership of the European Communities in that year's referendum on the issue, emphasised his opposition to xenophobia and his support of democracy, saying: "My view about the European Union has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners, but that I am in favour of democracy. ... I think they're building an empire there, they want us to be a part of their empire and I don't want that." The Czech president Václav Klaus rejected the term Euroscepticism for its purported negative undertones, saying at a meeting in April 2012 that the expressions for a Eurosceptic and their opponent should be "a Euro-realist" and someone who is "Euro-naïve", respectively. François Asselineau of the French Popular Republican Union has criticised the use of the term 'sceptic' to describe hard Eurosceptics, and would rather advocate the use of the term "Euro opponent". He believes the use of the term 'sceptic' for soft Eurosceptics to be correct, since other Eurosceptic parties in France are "merely criticising" the EU without taking into account the fact that the Treaty of Rome can only be modified with a unanimous agreement of all the EU member states, something he considers impossible to achieve. Soft Euroscepticism Soft Euroscepticism reflects a support for the existence of, and membership of, a form of EU but with opposition to specific EU policies, or in Taggart's and Szczerbiak's words, "where there is NOT a principled objection to European integration or EU membership but where concerns on one (or a number) of policy areas lead to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU, or where there is a sense that 'national interest' is currently at odds with the EU's trajectory." Both the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, dominated by the right-wing Polish party Law and Justice, and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left, which is an alliance of the left-wing parties in the European Parliament, display soft Euroscepticism. The European Conservatives and Reformist Group does not itself use the descriptions Euroscepticism or soft Euroscepticism and instead describes its position as one of Eurorealism, a distinction described by Leruth as being one that is "quite subtle but should not be ignored" given the association of the term Euroscepticism with "European disintegration". Leruth describes Eurorealism as "a pragmatic, anti-federalist, and flexible vision of European integration where the principle of subsidiarity prevails, aiming to reform the current institutional framework to extend the role of national parliaments in the decision-making process." Steven states that "Eurorealism is a form of conservativism, first and foremost, rather than a form or Euroscepticism, even if it obviously very much also has the 'soft' Eurosceptic tendencies which are present in a number of ECR member parties."> Anti-Europeanism While having some overlaps, Euroscepticism and anti-Europeanism are different. Euroscepticism is criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. Anti-Europeanism is sentiment or policies in opposition to Europe. For example, American exceptionalism in the United States has long led to criticism of European domestic policy, such as the size of the welfare state in European countries, and foreign policy, such as European countries that did not support the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Other terms Some scholars consider the gradual difference in terminology between hard and soft Euroscepticism inadequate to accommodate the large differences in terms of political agenda; hard Euroscepticism has also been referred to as Europhobia as opposed to mere Euroscepticism. Other alternative names for hard and soft Euroscepticism include withdrawalist and reformist, respectively. Eurobarometer surveys A survey in , conducted by TNS Opinion and Social on behalf of the European Commission, showed that, across the EU as a whole, those with a positive image of the EU were down from a high of 52% in 2007 to 37% in autumn 2015; this compares with 23% with a negative image of the EU, and 38% with a neutral image. About 43% of Europeans thought things were "going in the wrong direction" in the EU, compared with 23% who thought things were going "in the right direction" (11% "don't know"). About 32% of EU citizens tend to trust the EU as an institution, and about 55% do not tend to trust it (13% "don't know"). Distrust of the EU was highest in Greece (81%), Cyprus (72%), Austria (65%), France (65%), the United Kingdom (UK) and the Czech Republic (both 63%). Overall, more respondents distrusted their own government (66%) than they distrusted the EU (55%). Distrust of national government was highest in Greece (82%), Slovenia (80%), Portugal (79%), Cyprus (76%), and France (76%). A Eurobarometer survey carried out four days prior to and six days after the 2016 United States presidential election revealed that the surprise victory of Donald Trump caused an increase in the popularity of the EU in Europe. The increase was strongest among the political right and among respondents who perceived their country as economically struggling. A survey carried out in April 2018 for the European Parliament by Kantar Public consulting found that support for the EU was "the highest score ever measured since 1983". Support for the EU was up in 26 out of 28 EU countries, the exceptions being Germany and the UK, where support had dropped by about 2% since the previous survey. Almost half (48%) of the 27,601 EU citizens surveyed agreed that their voice counted in the EU, up from 37% in 2016, whereas 46% disagreed with this statement. Two-thirds (67%) of respondents felt that their country had benefited from EU membership and 60% said that being part of the bloc was a good thing, as opposed to 12% who felt the opposite. At the height of the EU's financial and economic crises in 2011, just 47% had been of the view that EU membership was a good thing. Support for EU membership was greatest in Malta (93%), Ireland (91%), Lithuania (90%), Poland (88%), Luxembourg (88%), Estonia (86%), and Denmark (84%), and lowest in Greece (57%), Bulgaria (57%), Cyprus (56%), Austria (54%), the United Kingdom (53%), and Italy (44%). When asked which issues should be a priority for the European Parliament, survey respondents picked terrorism as the most pressing topic of discussion, ahead of youth unemployment and immigration. Not all countries shared the same priorities. Immigration topped the list in Italy (66% of citizens surveyed considered it a priority issue), Malta (65%), and Hungary (62%) but fighting youth unemployment and support for economic growth were top concerns in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Croatia. Social protection of citizens was the top concern for Dutch, Swedish, and Danish respondents. The April 2019 Eurobarometer showed that despite the challenges of the past years, and in cases such as the ongoing debate surrounding Brexit, possibly even because of it, the European sense of togetherness had not weakened, with 68% of respondents across the EU27 believing that their countries have benefited from being part of the EU, a historically high level since 1983. On the other hand, more Europeans (27%) were uncertain and saw the EU as "neither a good thing nor a bad thing", an increase in 19 countries. Despite the overall positive attitude towards the EU but in line with the uncertainty expressed by a growing number of Europeans, the feeling that things were not going in the right direction in both the EU and in their own countries had increased to 50% on EU average since September 2018. The Eurobarometer 93.1 survey was in the field across Europe when the European Council summit reached political agreement on a pandemic economic recovery fund (later named Next Generation EU) on 21 July 2020. A comparison of Eurobarometer responses gathered before this seminal decision and interviews conducted shortly thereafter indicates that the European Council's endorsement of pandemic economic relief increased popular support of COVID-19 economic recovery aid - but only among Europeans who view EU decisionmakers as trustworthy. General public image of EU by country according to Eurobarometer 2024: History in the European Parliament 1999–2004 A study analysed voting records of the Fifth European Parliament and ranked groups, concluding: "Towards the top of the figure are the more pro-European parties (PES, EPP-ED, and ALDE), whereas towards the bottom of the figure are the more anti-European parties (EUL/NGL, G/EFA, UEN and EDD)." 2004–2009 In 2004, 37 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliament group called "Independence and Democracy" from the old Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD) group. The main goal of the ID group was to reject the proposed Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. Some delegations within the group, notably that from UKIP, also advocated the complete withdrawal of their country from the EU, while others only wished to limit further European integration. 2009 elections The elections of 2009 saw a significant fall in support in some areas for Eurosceptic parties, with all such MEPs from Poland, Denmark and Sweden losing their seats. In the UK, the Eurosceptic UKIP achieved second place in the election, finishing ahead of the governing Labour Party, and the British National Party (BNP) won its first-ever two MEPs. Although new members joined the ID group from Greece and the Netherlands, it was unclear whether the group would reform in the new parliament. The ID group did reform, as the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) and is represented by 32 MEPs from nine countries. 2014 elections The elections of 2014 saw a big anti-establishment vote in favour of Eurosceptic parties, which took around a quarter of the seats available. Those that came first their national elections included: UKIP in the UK (the first time since 1906 that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won a national vote), the National Front in France, the People's Party in Denmark and Syriza in Greece. Second places were taken by Sinn Féin in Ireland and the Five Star Movement in Italy. Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, agreed following the election to re-evaluate the economic area's agenda and to launch consultations on future policy areas with the 28 member states. 2019 elections The elections of 2019 saw the centre-left and centre-right parties suffer significant losses including losing their overall majority, while green, pro-EU liberal, and some Eurosceptic right wing parties saw significant gains. Those that came first in their national elections included: the Brexit Party in the UK (which was only launched on 12 April 2019 by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage), the National Rally of France (formerly the National Front party until June 2018), Fidesz in Hungary, Lega in Italy, and Law and Justice in Poland. There were also notable falls in support for the Danish People's Party (previously topped the 2014 European election). Whilst Vox got elected with 3 seats, Spain's first Eurosceptic party and Belgium's Vlaams Belang rallied to gain second place after its poor 2014 result. 2024 elections In the elections of 2024, 24 EU countries elected at least one member of a Eurosceptic group (European Conservatives and Reformists Group, Patriots for Europe or Europe of Sovereign Nations). The three exceptions were Ireland, Malta and Slovenia. In EU member states Austria The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), established in 1956, is a right-wing populist party that mainly attracts support from young people and workers. In 1989, it changed its stance over the EU to Euroscepticism. It opposed Austria joining the EU in 1994, and opposed the introduction of the euro in 1998. The party would like to leave the EU if it threatens to develop into a country, or if Turkey joins. The FPÖ received 20–27% of the national vote in the 1990s, and more recently received 18% in 2008. Following the 2017 Austrian legislative election, it has 51/183 National Council seats, 16/62 Federal Council seats, and 4/19 European Parliament seats. The Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), established in 2005, is a socially conservative party that has always held Eurosceptic elements. In 2011 the party openly supported leaving the eurozone, and in 2012 it announced that it supported a full withdrawal from the European Union. The party has also called upon a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In polls it generally received around 10–15%, although in one state it did receive 45% of the vote in 2009. Since the 2017 election, it has 0/183 National Council seats, 0/62 Federal Council seats, and 0/19 European Parliament seats. Team Stronach, established in 2012, has campaigned to reform the European Union, as well as to replace the euro with an Austrian Euro. In 2012, it regularly received 8–10% support in national polls. Politicians from many different parties (including the Social Democratic Party and the BZÖ) as well as previous independents switched their allegiances to the new party upon creation. In two local elections in March 2013, it won 11% of the vote in Carinthia, and 10% of the vote in Lower Austria. It dissolved in 2017. Ewald Stadler, a former member of FPÖ (and later of BZÖ) was very Eurosceptic, but in 2011 became a member of the European Parliament due to the Lisbon Treaty. Before Stadler accepted the seat, this led to heavy critics by Jörg Leichtfried (SPÖ) "Stadler wants to just rescue his political career" because Stadler before mentioned he would never accept a seat as MEP if this was only due to the Lisbon Treaty. On 23 December 2013 he founded a conservative and Eurosceptic party called The Reform Conservatives, although it has been inactive since June 2016. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the FPÖ increased its vote to 19.7% (up 7.0%), gaining 2 new MEPs, making a total of 4; the party came third, behind the ÖVP and the SPÖ. EU-STOP (the electoral alliance of the EU Withdrawal Party and the Neutral Free Austria Federation) polled 2.8%, gaining no seats, and the Reform Conservatives 1.2%, with Team Stronach putting up no candidates. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the FPÖ came 3rd with 17.2% of the vote which was only slightly down on 2014 despite a scandal allegedly promising public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian backer. This precipitated the collapse of the ruling coalition and a new election being called. Belgium According to Eurostat, in the fall of 2018, 44% of Belgians stated that they did not trust the European Union. The main Eurosceptic party in Belgium is the right-wing Vlaams Belang which is active in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, however the left-wing PTB-PVDA also opposes the EU on many issues, primarily austerity and social policy. In the 2014 European Parliament election, Vlaams Belang lost over half of its previous vote share, polling 4.3% (down 5.5%) and losing 1 of its 2 members of the European Parliament. Despite the presence of Eurosceptic parties in Belgium, their weight is relatively low, as Belgium is predominantly Europeanist. In 2019, Vlaams Belang stated in its program for the 2019 European Parliament election that it opposes the creation of a European state, would like to change the Economic and Monetary Union of the EU, and to end the Schengen Area, and refuses the accession of Turkey to the EU. More widely, the euro-sceptic arguments of the Vlaams Belang are based on four pillars: loss of sovereignty (for instance on economic sovereignty or on the binding legal order); the financial cost of the European Union; less competences for European Union; leaving the euro (even though in 2019 the party has changed its line and now wants to reform the euro). During the 2019 European Parliament election in Belgium, Vlaams Belang made substantial gains in both and polled in second place in Flemish region. At the beginning of 2019, the party was enrolled in the group of European Alliance of People and Nations in the European Parliament. The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) is a soft Eurosceptic party in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Before 2010, the N-VA was pro-European and supported the idea of a democratic European confederation, but has since altered this policy to a more sceptical stance on further European integration and now calls for more democratic transparency within the EU, changes to the EU's common asylum policy and economic reforms to the Eurozone. The N-VA has obtained 26.8% of the votes or 4 seats of the Dutch-language college out of 12 (21 MEPs for Belgium) in the 2014 European Parliament election. In April 2019, it stood in European Conservatives and Reformists Group of the European Parliament, and can be considered a moderate Eurosceptic party. In the French-speaking part of Belgium (Walloons), there are four Eurosceptic parties. The first one is Nation Movement, a far-right party which was a member of the Alliance for Peace and Freedom in the European Parliament. The second one is National Front, also a far right party which criticizes the European bureaucracy, intends to guarantee and preserve national independence and freedom in a liberated Europe; it also reaffirms the Christian roots of Europe. The third one is the People's Party, classified as right or extreme right. In its program for the European election of 2019 the People's Party proposes to abolish the European Commission, reduce the number of European parliamentarians and fight against the worker-posted directive. For this party, the EU must be led by a president elected by universal suffrage with clear but limited competences. It also wants to renegotiate the European Union treaties, restrict the judicial activism of the European Court of Human Rights. It declares itself against the Global Compact for Migration. The last one is the . In early 2019, the party aims to reduce the powers of the European Commission, to abolish the Common Agricultural Policy, to abandon common defense projects, to simplify the exit procedure of the European Union, to reject federalism and to forbid the European Union to direct economic, fiscal or social policy, Finally, the Workers' Party of Belgium is an electoral and unitary party. It also intends to revise the European treaties considered too liberal. One of the Party's currencies is "The left that stings, against the Europe of money". Bulgaria Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are NFSB, Attack, and VMRO – BND, which is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists Group. Bulgaria's Minister of Finance, Simeon Djankov, stated in 2011 that ERM II membership to enter the Euro zone would be postponed until after the Eurozone crisis had stabilised. In the 2014 European Parliament election Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU, with the Eurosceptic Attack party receiving 3% of the vote, down 9%, with the splinter group National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria taking 3; neither party secured any MEPs. A coalition between VMRO – BND and Bulgaria Without Censorship secured an MEP position for Angel Dzhambazki from IMRO, who is a hard Eurosceptic. Followers of Eurosceptic Attack tore down and trampled the European flag on 3 March 2016 at a meeting of the party in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, dedicated to the commemoration of the 138th anniversary of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. In the 2019 European Parliament election, Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU with the ruling centre-right Gerb party winning with 31%, against 26% for the socialist BSP. Since the 2021–2023 Bulgarian political crisis, the far-right hard Eurosceptic party Revival has outplaced Attack, with it getting 14% on the most recent 2023 Bulgarian parliamentary election. Croatia Parties with Eurosceptic views are mainly small right-wing parties like Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Party of Rights dr. Ante Starčević, Croatian Pure Party of Rights, Autochthonous Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Christian Democratic Party and Only Croatia – Movement for Croatia. The only parliamentary party that is vocally Eurosceptic is the Human Shield that won 5 out of 151 seats at the 2016 parliamentary election. Their position is generally considered to waver between hard and soft Euroscepticism; it requests thorough reform of the EU so that all member states would be perfectly equal. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Human Shield gained its first seat in the European Parliament with 6% of the vote putting it in 5th place. Cyprus Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views in Cyprus are the Progressive Party of Working People and ELAM. In the 2019 European Parliament election, there was little change politically – the conservatives won narrowly, the ruling DISY taking two seats with 29%, followed by socialist AKEL (27.5%, two seats) with no seats taken by Eurosceptic parties. Czechia In May 2010, the Czech president Václav Klaus said that they "needn't hurry to enter the Eurozone". Petr Mach, an economist, a close associate of president Václav Klaus and a member of the Civic Democratic Party between 1997 and 2007, founded the Free Citizens Party in 2009. The party aims to mainly attract dissatisfied Civic Democratic Party voters. At the time of the Lisbon Treaty ratification, they were actively campaigning against it, supported by the president Vaclav Klaus, who demanded opt-outs such as were granted to the United Kingdom and Poland, unlike the governing Civic Democratic Party, who endorsed it in the Chamber of Deputies. After the treaty has been ratified, Mach's party is in favour of withdrawing from the European Union completely. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Free Citizens Party won one mandate and allied with UKIP in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFD). The 2017 Czech legislative election brought into Parliament one soft eurosceptic party, the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) (11%), and two hard eurosceptic parties, the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) (11%) and the left-wing to far-left Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) (8%). An April 2016 survey by the CVVM Institute indicated that 25% of Czechs were satisfied with EU membership, down from 32% the previous year. Dividends worth CZK 270 billion were paid to the foreign owners of Czech companies in 2017, which has become a political issue in the Czech Republic. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Civic Democratic Party saw its vote share rise to 15% and its seats doubled from 2 to 4. The Freedom and Direct Democracy party took 2 seats with 9% of the vote. KSČM dropped 2 seats leaving it with only one and a vote share of 7% Denmark The People's Movement against the EU only takes part in European Parliament elections and has one member in the European Parliament. The soft Eurosceptic June Movement, originally a split-off from the People's Movement against the EU, existed from 1992 to 2009. In the Danish Parliament, the Red-Green Alliance previously advocated withdrawal from the EU, but in March 2019, the party announced it would no longer campaign for a referendum to leave the EU, pointing to Brexit illustrating the need for clarity before withdrawal can be considered. The Danish People's Party also advocates withdrawal, but says it supports some EU structures such as the internal market, and supported the EU-positive Liberal-Conservative coalition between 2001 and 2011 and again from 2015 to 2019. The Socialist People's Party, minorities within the Social Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party, and some smaller parties were against accession to the European Union in 1972. Still in 1986, these parties advocated a no vote in the Single European Act referendum. Later, the Social Liberal Party changed to a strongly EU-positive party, and EU opposition within the Social Democratic Party faded. The Socialist People's Party were against the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998 and Denmark's joining the euro in 2000, but has become increasingly EU-positive, for example when MEP Margrete Auken left the European United Left–Nordic Green Left and joined The Greens–European Free Alliance in 2004. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party came first by a large margin with 27% of the vote, gaining 2 extra seats for a total of 4 MEPs. The People's Movement against the EU polled 8%, retaining its single MEP. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party lost around two-thirds of their previous vote share dropping from 4 seats to just 1. The People's Movement against the EU lost their seat and the Red-Green Alliance got one seat. The 2019 Danish general election saw the emergence of a new hard Eurosceptic party Nye Borgerlige which supports Denmark leaving the EU. The party won four seats in parliament. Estonia The Independence Party and Centre Party were against accession to the EU, but only the Independence Party still wants Estonia to withdraw from the EU. The Conservative People's Party (EKRE) also has some Eurosceptic policies and increased its vote share from 4% in 2014 to 13% in the 2019 European Elections winning one seat. Finland The largest Eurosceptic party in Finland is the Finns Party. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Finns Party increased their vote share by 3% to 13%, adding a second MEP. With their 39 seats, the Finns Party are also the second-biggest party in the 200-seat Finnish Eduskunta. In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Finns Party increased their vote share slightly from 13% to 14% and retained their 2 seats. In its latest party platform written in 2019, the Finns Party is strongly opposed to further EU integration. The party proposes introducing a parallel currency within Finland in tandem with the Euro in order to phase out Finnish membership of the Eurozone and argues that while Finland is needed in the short-term in the European Parliament to defend Finland's interests, the country should also enact policies to help gradually withdraw Finland from the EU. During the 2018 Finnish presidential election, the Finns Party candidate Laura Huhtasaari stated that her campaign would support exiting the EU. France In France there are multiple parties that are Eurosceptic to different degrees, varying from advocating less EU intervention in national affairs, to advocating outright withdrawal from the EU and the Eurozone. These parties belong to all sides of the political spectrum, so the reasons for their Euroscepticism may differ. In the past many French people appeared to be uninterested in such matters, with only 40% of the French electorate voting in the 2009 European Parliament elections. Right-wing Eurosceptic parties include the Gaullist Debout la République, and Mouvement pour la France, which was part of Libertas, a pan-European Eurosceptic party. In the 2009 European Parliament elections, Debout la République received 1.8% of the national vote, and Libertas 4.8%. In a similar way to some moderate parties, the French right and far-right in general are naturally opposed to the EU, as they criticise France's loss of political and economic sovereignty to a supranational entity. Some of these hard Eurosceptic parties include the Popular Republican Union and The Patriots and formerly the Front National (FN). Popular Republican Union seek France's withdrawal from the EU and the euro as well as France's withdrawal from NATO. The FN received 33.9% of the votes in the 2017 French presidential election, making it the largest Eurosceptic party in France. In June 2018, the National Front was renamed as National Rally (RN) and in 2019 dropped support for France leaving the European Union and the Eurozone from its manifesto, instead calling for "reform from within" the union. Eurosceptic parties on the left in France tend to criticise what they see as the neoliberal agenda of the EU, as well as the elements of its structure which are undemocratic and seen as top-down. These parties include the Parti de Gauche and the French Communist Party, which formed the Front de Gauche for the 2009 European Parliament elections and received 6.3% of the votes. The leader of the Left Front defends a complete reform of the Monetary Union, rather than the withdrawal of France from the Eurozone. Some of the major far-left Eurosceptic parties in France include the New Anticapitalist Party which received 4.8% and Lutte Ouvrière which received 1.2%. The Citizen and Republican Movement, a left-wing Eurosceptic and souverainist party, have not participated in any elections for the European Parliament. The party Chasse, Pêche, Nature & Traditions, is an agrarianist Eurosceptic party that says it is neither left nor right. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the National Front won the elections with 24.9% of the vote, a swing of 18.6%, winning 24 seats, up from 3 previously. The former French President François Hollande had called for the EU to be reformed and for a scaling back of its power. In the European Parliament election, 2019, the renamed National Rally won the elections with 23.3% of the vote, winning 22 seats, down from 23 previously when their vote share was 24.9%. Germany The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is Germany's largest Eurosceptic party. It was elected into the German Parliament with 94 seats in September 2017. Initially the AfD was a soft Eurosceptic party, that considered itself pro-Europe and pro-EU, but opposed the euro, which it believed had undermined European integration, and called for reforms to the Eurozone. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Alternative for Germany came 5th with 7% of the vote, winning 7 seats and is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists Group. The Alternative for Germany went on to take seats in three state legislatures in the Autumn of 2014. The party became purely Eurosceptic in 2015, when an internal split occurred, leading to Frauke Petry's leadership and a more hard-line approach to the European Union, including its calling for an end for German Eurozone membership, withdrawal from EU common asylum policies and significantly reducing the power of the EU with some AfD members supporting a complete exit from the EU altogether. In July 2015 an AfD splinter group created a new soft Eurosceptic party called Alliance for Progress and Renewal. In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Alternative for Germany increased their vote share from 7% and 7 seats to 11% and 11 seats. In the 2021 German Federal Election, AfD won 10.3% of the vote and 94 seats whereas in 2017, they received 12.6% of the vote and 83 seats; this meant they moved from third place to fifth place, falling behind the Green Party and FDP, both of which had been less popular than the AfD in 2017. Despite their overall electoral decline, the AfD still emerged as the largest in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, and saw a strong performance in eastern Germany. Greece Golden Dawn, Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Greek Solution, ANEL, Course of Freedom, Popular Unity, and LAOS have been the main Eurosceptic parties in Greece. According to the London School of Economics, Greece used to be the second most Eurosceptic country in the European Union, with 50% of Greeks thinking that their country has not benefited at all from the EU (only behind the UK). Meanwhile, 33% of Greeks viewed Greek membership in EU as a good thing, marginally ahead of the UK. 81% of Greeks felt that the EU was going in the wrong direction. These figures represented a major increase in Euroscepticism in Greece since 2009. In June 2012, the Eurosceptic parties in Greece that were represented in the parliament before the Election in January 2015 (ANEL, Golden Dawn, KKE) got 45.8% of the votes and 40.3% of the seats in the parliament. In the legislative election of January 2015 the pro-European (left and right-wing) parties (ND, PASOK, Potami, KIDISO, EK and Prasinoi-DIMAR) got 43.3% of the votes. The Eurosceptic parties got 54.6%. The Eurosceptic left (KKE, ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (M–L)/M–L KKE) got 42.6% of the votes and the Eurosceptic right (Golden Dawn, ANEL and LAOS) got 12.1% of the votes, with Syriza ahead with 36.3%. The Eurosceptic parties got 194 seats in the new parliament and the pro-EU parties got 106 seats. According to the polls conducted in June and July 2015 (12 polls), the Eurosceptic left would get on average 48.0% (excluding extraparliamentary parties as ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (m–l)/ML-KKE), the parliamentary pro-EU parties (Potami, New Democracy and PASOK) would get 33.8%, the extra-parliamentary (not represented in the Hellenic Parliament) pro-EU parties (KIDISO and EK) would get 4.4% and the Eurosceptic right would get 10.2% (excluding extraparliamentary parties, such as LAOS, not displayed on recent opinion polls). The soft Eurosceptic parties would get 42.3%, the hard Eurosceptic parties (including KKE, ANEL and Golden Dawn) would get 15.9%, and the pro-EU parties (including extra-parliamentary parties displayed on opinion polls) would get 38.3% of the votes. In the European Parliament election, 2014, Syriza won the election with 26.6% of the vote (a swing of 21.9%) taking 6 seats (up 5), with Golden Dawn coming 3rd taking 3 seats, the Communist Party taking 2 seats and the Independent Greeks gaining their first ever seat. Syriza's leader Tsipras said he's not anti-European and does not want to leave the euro. According to The Economist, Tsipras is willing to negotiate with Greece's European partners, and it is believed a Syriza victory could encourage radical leftist parties across Europe. Alexis Tsipras vowed to reverse many of the austerity measures adopted by Greece since a series of bailouts began in 2010, at odds with the Eurogroup's positions. The government coalition in Greece was composed by Syriza and ANEL (right-wing hard Eurosceptic party, led by Panos Kammenos, who is the current Minister of Defence). Euroscepticism has softened in Greece as the economy improved. According to a research in early 2018, 68% of Greeks judge as positive the participation of Greece in the EU (instead of 53.5% in 2017). In the European Parliament election, 2019, the New Democracy movement, beat the ruling left-wing Syriza formation with 33.1% and 23.8% of the vote respectively, maintaining Syriza's 6 seats and prompting the Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to call a legislative election on 7 July 2019. In this election, which was won by ND, the pro-European parties (ND, SYRIZA, KINAL, MeRA25, and the extra-parliamentary Union of Centrists and Recreate Greece) got 84.9% of the vote and the Eurosceptic parties (KKE, Greek Solution, the extraparliamentary Golden Dawn and a host of other small mainly left-wing parties) got 15.1%. That drastic change in the balance is mostly the result of SYRIZA abandoning Euroscepticism. Hungary Viktor Orbán is the soft Eurosceptic Prime Minister of Hungary for the national-conservative Fidesz Party. Another Eurosceptic party that was present in Hungary was Jobbik, which until around 2016, was identified as a radical and far-right party. Those far-right factions, who left Jobbik, decided to form the Our Homeland Movement party. In 2015, 39% of the Hungarian population had a positive image of the EU, 20% had a negative image, and 40% neutral (1% "Don't know"). In the 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, Fidesz got 44.5% of the votes, Jobbik got 20.5% of the votes and the communist Hungarian Workers' Party got 0.6% of the votes. Thus at the time, Eurosceptic parties in Hungary obtained 65.7% of the votes, one of the highest figures in Europe. The green-liberal Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika, LMP) classifies as a soft or reformist Eurosceptic party given its self-professed euro-critical stance. During the European parliamentary campaign of 2014 party Co-president András Schiffer described LMP as having a pronounced pro-integration position on environmental, wage and labour policy as supporting member state autonomy on the self-determination of local communities concerning land resources. So as to combat the differentiated integration of the multi-speed Europe which discriminates against Eastern and Southern member states, LMP would like to initiate an eco-social market economy within the union. In the European Parliament election, 2019, Fidesz consolidated their position by increasing their vote share to 51.5% and adding a seat to take their tally to 13. Former Eurosceptic (now pro-European) Jobbik dropped to 6.3% of the votes, losing 2 of its 3 seats. The Momentum Movement, a newly created pro-European party, came 3rd with 9.3% of the vote, with the strongly pro-European Democratic Coalition coming second with 16.1% of the vote. Our Homeland Movement got 3.3% of the votes, gaining no seats. Ireland Euroscepticism is a minority view in Ireland, with opinion polls from 2016 to 2018 indicating growing support for EU membership, moving from 70% to 92% in that time. The Irish people initially voted against ratifying the Nice and Lisbon Treaties. Following renegotiations, second referendums on both were passed with approximately 2:1 majorities in both cases. Some commentators and smaller political groups questioned the validity of the Irish Government's decision to call second referendums. The left-wing Irish republican party Sinn Féin expresses soft Eurosceptic positions on the current structure of the European Union and the direction in which it is moving. The party expresses, "support for Europe-wide measures that promote and enhance human rights, equality and the all-Ireland agenda", but has a "principled opposition" to a European superstate. In its manifesto for the 2015 UK general election, Sinn Féin pledged that the party would campaign for the UK to stay within the EU. In the 2019 European Parliament election, Sinn Féin won one seat and 11.7% of the vote, down 7.8%. The Socialist Party, a Trotskyist organisation, supports Ireland leaving the EU and supported the Brexit result. It argues that the European Union is institutionally capitalist and neoliberal. The Socialist Party campaigned against the Lisbon and Nice Treaties and favours the foundation of an alternative Socialist European Union. Italy The Five Star Movement (M5S), an anti-establishment movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, originally set itself out as a Eurosceptic party. The M5S received 25.5% of vote in the 2013 general election, becoming the largest anti-establishment and Eurosceptic party in Europe. The party used to advocate a non-binding referendum on the withdrawal of Italy from the Eurozone (but not from the European Union) and the return to the lira. Since then, the party has toned down its eurosceptic rhetoric and such policy was rejected in 2018, and the M5S's leader has since stated that the "European Union is the Five Star Movement's home", clarifying that the party wants Italy to stay in the EU, even though it remains critical of some of its treaties. The M5S's popular support is distributed all across Italy: in the 2018 general election the party won 32.7% of the popular vote nationwide, and was particularly successful in central and southern Italy. A party that retains a Eurosceptic identity is the Northern League (LN), a regionalist movement led by Matteo Salvini favouring Italy's exit from the Eurozone and the re-introduction of the lira. When in government, Lega approved the Treaty of Lisbon. The party won 6.2% of the vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections, but two of its leading members are presidents of Lombardy and Veneto (where Lega gained 40.9% of the vote in 2015). In the 2014 European Parliament election the Five Star Movement came second, with 17 seats and 21.2% of the vote after contesting EP seats for the first time. Northern League had five seats and The Other Europe with Tsipras had three seats. Other minor Eurosceptic organizations include right-wing political parties (e.g., Brothers of Italy, Tricolour Flame, New Force, National Front, CasaPound, National Movement for Sovereignty, the No Euro Movement), far-left political parties (e.g., the Communist Party of Marco Rizzo, the Italian Communist Party and the political movement Power to the People) and other political movements (e.g., the Sovereignist Front, MMT Italy). In addition, the European Union is criticized (especially for the austerity and the creation of the euro) by some left-wing thinkers, like the trade unionist Giorgio Cremaschi and the journalist Paolo Barnard, and some academics, such as Alberto Bagnai the philosopher Diego Fusaro. According to the Standard Eurobarometer 87 conducted by the European Commission in spring 2017, 48% of Italians tend not to trust the European Union compared to 36% of Italians who do. In the 2019 European election, the Italian Eurosceptic and souverainist right-wing, represented in large part by the League, increased its number of seats in the EP, but was not assigned any presidency in the committees of the European Parliament. Despite its national political alliance with the League during the Conte Cabinet, the Five Star Movement voted for Ursula von der Leyen, member of pro-EU Christian Democratic Union of Germany, as President of the European Commission. In July 2020, senator Gianluigi Paragone formed Italexit, a new political party with a main goal to withdraw Italy from the European Union. Latvia The National Alliance (For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK/All for Latvia!), Union of Greens and Farmers and For Latvia from the Heart are parties that are described by some political commentators as bearing soft Eurosceptic views. A small hard Eurosceptic party exists, but it has failed to gain any administrative seats throughout history of its existence. Lithuania The Order and Justice party had mainly Eurosceptic views. Luxembourg The Alternative Democratic Reform Party is a soft Eurosceptic party. It is a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. Malta The Labour Party was not in favour of Malta entering the European Union. It was in favour of a partnership with the EU. After a long battle, the Nationalist Party led by Eddie Fenech Adami won the referendum and the following election, making Malta one of the states to enter the European Union on 1 May 2004. The party is now pro-European. Nowadays the People's Party often adopts Eurosceptic views. Netherlands Historically, the Netherlands have been a very pro-European country, being one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, and campaigning with much effort to include the United Kingdom into the Community in the 1970s and others after that. It has become slightly more Eurosceptic in the 2000s, rejecting the European Constitution in 2005 and complaining about the relatively high financial investment into the Union or the democratic deficit amongst other issues. A number of hard and soft eurosceptic parties have politicians elected to the Dutch House of Representatives and European Parliament which include: The nationalist Party for Freedom (founded in 2006) is a hard-eurosceptic party and wants the Netherlands to leave the EU in its entirety, because it believes the EU is undemocratic, costs money and cannot close the borders for immigrants. The conservative and right-wing populist Forum for Democracy (FvD) party was originally founded by Thierry Baudet as a think tank to campaign against the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. In 2016, the FvD was established as a fully fledged party. It is opposed to many of the policies of the European Union and calls for a referendum on Dutch membership in which it would endorse withdrawal. The conservative-liberal JA21 party (founded in 2021 as a splinter from the FvD) is opposed to Dutch participation several European Union agreements, including its immigration and asylum policies, and believes Dutch identity and self-determination should be prioritized above the EU. It supports Dutch withdrawal from the Eurozone and for the Netherlands to exit EU treaties it deems a threat to national sovereignty. The Socialist Party believes the European Union has already brought Europe 50 years of peace and prosperity and argues that European co-operation is essential for tackling global problems like climate change and international crime. The SP opines that the current Union is dominated by the big businesses and the big countries, while the labour movement, consumer organisations and smaller companies are often left behind. "Neoliberal" measures have supposedly increased social inequality, and perhaps the Union is expanding too fast and taking on too much power in issues that should be dealt with on a national level. The conservative Protestant Reformed Political Party and the Christian Union favour co-operation within Europe, but reject a superstate, especially one that is dominated by Catholics, or that infringes on religious rights and/or privileges. The pensioner's interest party 50PLUS is moderately Eurosceptic. The ecologist Party for the Animals favours European co-operation, but believes the current EU does not respect animal rights enough and should have a more active policy on environment protection. The agrarian and rural interests Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) was founded in 2019 and is a soft-eurosceptic party. It supports membership of the EU for economic and trade purposes, but argues the political power of the EU should be stripped back so the bloc is closer to the model of the former EEC, wants reforms made to the Eurozone and is against the EU becoming a superstate. A prominent former Eurosceptic party in the Netherlands was the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF) established by politician and academic Pim Fortuyn in 2002. The party campaigned to reduce Dutch financial contributions to the EU, was against Turkish membership and opposed what it saw as the excessive bureaucracy and threat to national sovereignty posed by the EU. During the 2002 general election, the LPF polled in second place with 17% of the vote. Following the assassination of Fortuyn in the run-up to the election, support for the party declined soon after and it was disbanded in 2008 with many of is former supporters transferring to the Party for Freedom. Despite these concerns, in 2014 the majority of the Dutch electorate continued to support parties that favour ongoing European integration: the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals, but most of all the (Liberal) Democrats. In 2016, a substantial majority in a low-turnout referendum rejected the ratification of an EU trade and association treaty with Ukraine. In the 2019 European Parliament election, Eurosceptic parties had mixed results with Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom losing all 4 of its seats taking only 3.5% of the vote. The new Forum for Democracy established in late 2016 took 11.0% of the vote and entered the European Parliament with 3 seats. Poland The main parties with Eurosceptic views are Law and Justice (PiS), United Poland (SP) and the Confederation Liberty and Independence and the main Eurosceptic politicians include Ryszard Bender, Andrzej Grzesik, Krzysztof Bosak, Dariusz Grabowski, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Marian Kowalski, Paweł Kukiz, Zbigniew Ziobro, Anna Sobecka, Robert Winnicki, Artur Zawisza, and Stanisław Żółtek. Former president of Poland Lech Kaczyński resisted giving his signature on behalf of Poland to the Treaty of Lisbon, objecting specifically to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Subsequently, Poland got an opt-out from this charter. As Polish President, Kaczyński also opposed the Polish government's intentions to join the euro. In 2015, it was reported that Euroscepticism was growing in Poland, which was thought to be due to the "economic crisis, concern over perceived interference from Brussels and migration". Polish president Andrzej Duda indicated that he wished for Poland to step back from further EU integration. He suggested that the country should "hold a referendum on joining the euro, resist further integration and fight the EU's green policies", despite getting the largest share of EU cash. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Law and Justice party won the largest number of seats, with a vote share increase up from 31.8% to 45.4%, increasing its seats from 19 to 27. In 2019, the former MEP Stanisław Żółtek created a political party called PolEXIT, whose flagship ideology is euroscepticism. Its candidate for president of Poland in the 2020 elections was the party's leader, Żółtek, who got 45 419 votes (0.23%), ranking 7th out of 11 candidates and did not qualify to the second round. Portugal The main Eurosceptic parties in Portugal are Chega, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), and Left Bloc (BE). Opinion polling in Portugal in 2015 indicated that 48 per cent tended not to trust the EU, while 79 per cent tended not to trust the Portuguese government (then led by Portugal Ahead). Eurosceptic political parties hold a combined total of 23 seats out of 230 in Portugal's parliament (BE 5, PCP 6, PNR 0, CHEGA 12) and a combined total of 4 out of Portugal's 21 seats in the European Parliament (PCP 2, BE 2, PNR 0, CHEGA 0). In the last 2014 European Parliament election, the Portuguese Communist Party won three seats and the Left Bloc won one seat. In the 2019 European Parliament election, Left Bloc took 9.8% and gained 1 seat, Portuguese Communist Party working in coalition with Ecologist Party "The Greens" took 6.9% and 2 seats and National Renovator Party (PNR) polled just 0.5%, with no seats. 2019 saw the emergence of a new Eurosceptic political party, Chega, who gained a seat in that year's legislative election. The party did not capture any seats in the 2019 European Parliament elections, but saw its leader André Ventura finish third in the 2021 presidential election, securing 11.9% of those voting. In the 2022 Portuguese snap election, Chega got 7.2% of the vote and 12 out of the 230 seats in the Assembly of the Republic. Romania Several parties espousing Eurosceptic views exist on the right, such as the New Republic, the Greater Romania Party and Noua Dreaptă, but as of June 2020 none of these parties are represented in European Parliament. Euroscepticism is relatively unpopular in Romania, a 2015 survey found 65% of Romanians had a positive view of the country's EU membership. The Eurosceptic parties remained unrepresented in the 2019 European Parliament election. The soft Eurosceptic Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which was founded in September 2019, entered the Romanian parliament in 2020. Slovakia Parties with Eurosceptic views are the Slovak National Party, Republic, We Are Family, People's Party Our Slovakia. Prominent Slovak Eurosceptic politicians include Andrej Danko, Milan Uhrík, Boris Kollár, Marian Kotleba. In the 2019 European Parliament election, People's Party Our Slovakia came 3rd securing 12.1% and winning their first 2 seats in the European Parliament, whereas the Slovak National Party and We Are Family did not win any seats. Slovenia Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are Slovenian National Party and The Left. Neither won seats in the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovenia. Spain The process of Europeanization changed during the years in Spain. In 1986 Spain entered in the European Community. Since then, Spain has been one of the most Europeanist countries. Therefore, when Spain became part of the European Community, the country had a strong pro-Europeanist feeling, according to Eurobarometer, as it reflected a 60% of the population. In Spain different reasons explain its entrance to the European Community. On the one hand, democracy has just been established in Spain after Francisco Franco dictatorship. On the other hand, the main objectives of Spain were to achieve economic development, and also a social modernization. Spain was one of the few countries to vote Yes for the European Constitution in a referendum in February 2005, though by a lower margin in Catalonia and the Basque Country. In 2008, after the financial crisis reached Spain, the percentage of pro European persons started to fall. Thus, during the five years of the economic crisis, the Eurobarometer shows how the trust in the EU increasingly fell in Spain, and the confidence of the Spanish citizens in the European Union decreased for more than 50 points. Spain became one of the most Eurosceptic countries among all European Union Members, as it happened in pretty much European countries, where nationalist and eurosceptic characterised parties became stronger. The historical two-parties system, composed by the conservative Partido Popular and the social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español, collapsed. In the 2000s, the liberal Ciudadanos and leftist party Podemos became part of the political context, gaining electoral consensus, followed years later by ultranationalist party Vox. The new parties were the effect of the disaffection of most Spaniards towards politics and politicians, that increased for several reasons: firstly, corruption at all political levels, reaching the Royal Family too; secondly, recession intensified distrust of the population towards national government; thirdly, a phase of renovation of the autonomous regions which extended the distance between the National government and the Regional ones. Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, a left-wing to far-left political party with about 1,300 members advocates independence for Catalonia outside of the European Union. Up to 2014 European elections, there were no Spanish parties present in the Eurosceptic groups at the European Parliament. In the 2015 Spanish general election, Podemos became the first left-wing Eurosceptic political party to win seats in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 69 seats, and in the 2019 Spanish general election, Vox became the first far-right Eurosceptic political party to win seats in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 24 seats. Sweden The Left Party of Sweden is against accession to the eurozone and previously wanted Sweden to leave the European Union until 2019. The new party program, adapted in 2024, is highly EU-critical but states that an EU-withdrawal is only a "last option". Their youth organization Young Left is still campaigning for Sweden to leave the EU. The nationalist and right-wing populist party Sweden Democrats (SD) support closer political, economic and military cooperation with neighboring Nordic and certain Northern European countries, but strongly oppose further EU integration and further transfers of Swedish sovereignty to the EU as a whole. The party is also against Swedish accession to the eurozone, the creation of a combined EU military budget and want to renegotiate Swedish membership of the Schengen Agreement. The SD also want a constitutional amendment to require that all EU treaties must be voted on by the Swedish public first and that if the EU cannot be reformed and assumes more power at the expense of national sovereignty Sweden must exit the bloc. The June List, a Eurosceptic list consisting of members from both the political right and left won three seats in the 2004 Elections to the European Parliament and sat in the EU-critical IND/DEM group in the European Parliament. The movement favours a withdrawal from the EU. Around 75% of the Riksdag members represent parties that officially supports the Sweden membership. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Sweden Democrats gained 2 seats with 9.7% of the vote, up 6.4%, and the Left Party took one seat with 6.3% of the vote. In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Sweden Democrats increased from 2 to 3 seats with 15.3% of the vote, up from 9.7%, and the Left Party retained its one seat with 6.8% of the vote. In winter 2019–2020, in connection with the request from "poor" member countries of much higher membership fees for "rich" member countries, for the reason of keeping support levels so "poor" countries would not suffer from Brexit, where a "rich" country left the union in part due to high membership fees, a media and social media debate for a "Swexit" increased. This was still rejected by parties representing a majority of the parliament, with the COVID-19 pandemic quickly taking over the debate. In other European countries Armenia Prosperous Armenia represents the main Eurosceptic party in Armenia. Following the 2018 Armenian parliamentary election, the party gained 26 seats in the National Assembly, becoming the official opposition. Following the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election, the party lost all political representation and currently acts as an extra-parliamentary force. The party was a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats is a Bosnian Serb political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Founded in 1996, it is the governing party in Bosnia and Herzegovina's entity called Republika Srpska, with its leader being Milorad Dodik. Georgia Georgian March is the main Eurosceptic party in Georgia. The party supports a slight distancing of Georgia from the West, as well as rejecting the country's entrance into NATO. In March 2022, Georgia submitted a formal application for membership of the EU. Iceland The three main Eurosceptic parties in Iceland are the Independence Party, Left-Green Movement and the Progressive Party. The Independence Party and the Progressive Party won the parliamentary election in April 2013 and they have halted the current negotiations with the European Union regarding Icelandic membership and tabled a parliamentary resolution on 21 February 2014 to withdraw the application completely. In 2017, Iceland's newly elected government announced that it would hold a vote in parliament on whether to hold a referendum on resuming EU membership negotiations. In November 2017 that government was replaced by a coalition of the Independence Party, the Left Green Movement and the Progressive Party; all of whom oppose membership. Only 11 out of 63 MPs are in favour of EU membership. Moldova The main Eurosceptic parties in Moldova are the left-wing Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, which officially declared its main purpose to be the integration of Moldova in the Eurasian Economic Union, Victory, and the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, even if nowadays its leader speech became more soft on the issue of Euroscepticism. As of March 2022 all the parties are represented in Moldovan Parliament, with 35 MPs out of a total of 101 MPs. In March 2022, Moldova submitted a formal application for membership of the EU. Montenegro The right-wing Democratic Front alliance are the main moderate eurosceptic subject in the Parliament of Montenegro, although its initially declaratively supported country's bid for accession to the European Union, all other parliamentary subjects officially advocates Montenegrin access to EU. The only parties that advocates Montenegro's rejecting the European integration are the extra-parliamentary right-wing populist to far-right parties, such as True Montenegro, Party of Serb Radicals, Democratic Party of Unity and the Serb List, all four are known for their close cooperation with the parliamentary Democratic Front. Norway Norway has rejected EU membership in two referendums, 1972 and 1994. The Centre Party, Christian Democratic Party, Socialist Left Party and Liberal Party were against EU membership in both referendums. The Liberal Party was particularly divided on the issue, and a large pro-EEC minority split off from the party before the 1972 referendum. In 2020, the Liberal Party officially reversed its position and since then, supports Norwegian EU membership. Among the established political parties of Norway, the Centre Party, Socialist Left Party, and Red Party are also against Norway's current membership of the European Economic Area. In addition, the libertarian Capitalist Party and Christian-conservative The Christians, both of whom have never held a seat in the Norwegian parliament, are also against Norway's membership in the EEA. Russia Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are the ruling United Russia, and opposition parties the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Following the annexation of Crimea, the European Union issued sanctions on the Russian Federation in response to what it regards as an "illegal" annexation and "deliberate destabilisation" of a neighbouring sovereign country. In response to this, Alexey Borodavkin – Russia's permanent representative with the UN – said "The EU is committing a direct violation of human rights by its actions against Russia. The unilateral sanctions introduced against us are not only illegitimate according to international law, they also undermine Russian citizens' freedom of travel, freedom of development, freedom of work and others". In the same year, Russian president Vladimir Putin said: "What are the so-called European values? Maintaining the coup, the armed seizure of power and the suppression of dissent with the help of the armed forces?" A February 2014 poll conducted by the Levada Center, Russia's largest independent polling organization, found that nearly 80% of Russian respondents had a "good" impression of the EU. This changed dramatically in 2014 with the Ukrainian crisis resulting in 70% taking a hostile view of the EU compared to 20% viewing it positively. A Levada poll released in August 2018 found that 68% of Russians polled believe that Russia needs to dramatically improve relations with Western countries. 42% of Russian respondents said they had a positive view of the EU, up from 28% in May 2018. San Marino A referendum was held in the landlocked microstate on 20 October 2013 in which the citizens were asked whether the country should submit an application to join the European Union. The proposal was rejected because of a low turnout, even though 50.3% of voters approved it. The "Yes" campaign was supported by the main left-wing parties (Socialist Party, United Left) and the Union for the Republic whereas the Sammarinese Christian Democratic Party suggested voting with a blank ballot, the Popular Alliance declared itself neutral, and We Sammarinese and the RETE movement supported the "No" campaign. The Citizens' Rights Directive, which defines the right of free movement for the European citizens, may have been an important reason for those voting no. Serbia In Serbia, political parties with eurosceptic views tend to be right-orientated. The most notable examples are the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) which since its inception has opposed entering the European Union and the right-wing populist Dveri. Political parties such as the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) had pro-Western views and was initially supportive of the accession into the European Union but under the late 2000s leadership of Vojislav Koštunica they turned eurosceptic, and the Enough is Enough (DJB) political party, initially a liberal centrist party that also supported the accession turned towards the right-wing eurosceptic position shortly after 2018. Historically, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav Left (JUL) were the only two left-leaning political parties that imposed eurosceptic and anti-Western views. The ruling coalition in Serbia, For Our Children, which is predominantly pro-European orientated is also composed of two minor eurosceptic parties, the right-wing Serbian People's Party that advocates closer ties to Russia, and the left-leaning Movement of Socialists which was formed as the eurosceptic split from SPS in the 2000s. Other minor political parties in Serbia that have eurosceptic views are Healthy Serbia, People's Freedom Movement, Russian Party, Love, Faith, Hope, Serbian Party Oathkeepers, Serbian Right and Leviathan Movement. Switzerland Switzerland has long been known for its neutrality in international politics. Swiss voters rejected EEA membership in 1992, and EU membership in 2001. Despite the passing of several referendums calling for closer relations between Switzerland and the European Union such as the adoption of bilateral treaties and the joining of the Schengen Area, a second referendum of the joining of the EEA or the EU is not expected, and the general public remains opposed to joining. In February 2014, the Swiss voters narrowly approved a referendum limiting the freedom of movement of EU citizens to Switzerland. Eurosceptic political parties include the Swiss People's Party, which is the largest political party in Switzerland, with 29.4% of the popular vote as of the 2015 federal election. Smaller Eurosceptic parties include, but are not limited to, the Federal Democratic Union, the Ticino League, and the Geneva Citizens' Movement, all of which are considered right-wing parties. In addition, the Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland is a political organisation in Switzerland that is strongly opposed to Swiss membership of or further integration otherwise with the European Union. Regionally, the German-speaking majority as well as the Italian-speaking areas are the most Eurosceptic, while French-speaking Switzerland tends to be more pro-European integration. In the 2001 referendum, the majority of French-speakers voted against EU membership. According to a 2016 survey conducted by M.I.S Trend and published in L'Hebdo, 69 percent of the Swiss population supports systematic border controls, and 53 percent want restrictions on the EU accord of the free movements of peoples and 14 percent want it completely abolished. 54% of the Swiss population said that if necessary, they would ultimately keep the freedom of movement of people's accord. Turkey The two main Eurosceptic parties are the far-right ultranationalist, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which secured 11.1% of votes, and 49 seats in the Parliament at the last election, and the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi), a far-right Sunni Islamist party, which has no seats in the Parliament, as it only secured 0.7% of the votes in the last election, far below the 10% threshold necessary to be represented in the Parliament. Many left-wing nationalist and far-left parties hold no seats at parliament but they control many activist and student movements in Turkey. The Patriotic Party (formerly called Workers' Party) consider the European Union as a front-runner of global imperialism. Founded on 26 August 2021 under the leadership of Ümit Özdağ, Victory Party (Turkey) is a Turkish nationalist and anti-immigrant political party. It is represented by two deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. "The European Union does not want to negotiate with Turkey. We will not humiliate Turkey anymore." Özdağ said. Ukraine Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are Opposition Platform – For Life, Opposition Bloc, Party of Shariy and Right Sector. The far-right Ukrainian group Right Sector opposes joining the European Union. It regards the EU as an "oppressor" of European nations. In the 2019 parliamentary election the Opposition Platform – For Life won 37 seats on the nationwide party list and 6 constituency seats. The leader of the Party of Shariy Anatoly Shariy is one of the closest associates of Viktor Medvedchuk, whom Ukraine's special services suspect of financing terrorism. United Kingdom Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom has been a minor, but significant, element in British politics ever since the inception of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor to the EU. With its relative geographic isolation in the British Isles from the rest of Europe on the main landmass, the politics of European membership has remained of much lower priority than internal national politics. After the European Communities membership referendum of 1975, the issue of Euroscepticism on the political stage was relegated to a fringe issue of the extreme ends of the political spectrum in the hard-left and the hard-right. The European Union strongly divides parts the British public, political parties, media and civil society. Historically, the Conservative Party has expressed divided sentiments on the issue of EU membership, with the official stance changing with party leadership and individual MPs within the party variously favouring total withdrawal and remaining in the EU, while others adopted a position of soft Euroscepticism being supportive of membership, but opposed to joining the Eurozone and pursuing further integration. Until the 1980s, the Conservative Party was somewhat more pro-EU than the Labour Party: for example, in the 1971 House of Commons vote on whether the UK should join the European Economic Community, only 39 of the then 330 Conservative MPs were opposed to membership. When Margaret Thatcher came into power as the Prime Minister in 1979, the Conservative Party's view on the EU saw a big swing from supporting the EU to becoming sceptical, thus campaigning against increasing its powers. Thatcher was seen as the ‘spiritual mother’ of Euroscepticism – though never argued to secede whilst being PM, envisioning a less integrated place in the EU, but still remaining a member – and became one of the most important Eurosceptic voices in the United Kingdom through the 1990s, ultimately changing the Conservatives’ view on the EU. In 2009 the Conservative Party actively campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty, which it believed would give away too much sovereignty to Brussels. Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague stated that, should the treaty be in force by the time of an incoming Conservative government, he would "not let matters rest there". Although often associated with being a major cause of the political far-right in the late 20th into the 21st century, with the contemporary Labour Party supporting EU membership, there have been notable Eurosceptic politicians on the far left of British politics, such as former Labour cabinet minister on the 1970s Tony Benn who held a longstanding opposition to British membership of the EU throughout his career. Other Labour MPs who supported Eurosceptic sentiments and British withdrawal have included Kate Hoey, Frank Field, Graham Stringer, Ian Austin, Tom Harris, Gisela Stuart, and Austin Mitchell. Other figures on the left have included George Galloway and socialist trade unionist Arthur Scargill who both endorsed UK secession from the European Union. The far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) was set up for the specific purpose of advocating for the UK unilaterally seceding the European Union (Brexit) since its foundation in 1993. This party had very little support from the UK population as a whole, due in good part to a general indifference and apathy to the issue. UKIP remained on the fringes of politics and only won one seat at a general election to the House of Commons in Parliament in 2015. It had stronger, but highly localised, support in local politics in solidly working class areas, winning 163 councillors to local authorities in these areas, but nowhere near enough to gain any majority in any council. Until 2014, it only won a small number seats to the EU Parliament, in the main due to public apathy for voting in European Parliamentary elections, represented by very low voter turn-out. A collapse in support across all three major political parties in 2014, resulted in UKIP gaining 27.5% of votes in the European Parliamentary elections, mainly across rural England and to a lesser degree in Wales. After the inconclusive general election result of 2010, resulting in a hung Parliament, the issue of EU membership remained very low on the political priority agenda — broadly speaking a non-issue. However, the party with the largest number of seats in the 2010 Parliament was the Conservatives, which was deeply riven by the issue being led by a pro-European leadership on the whole, but with a large number of very vociferous Eurosceptic backbenchers. As a political compromise, the party's leader David Cameron from his weak position was coerced into agreeing to a political pledge for a referendum on EU membership. By forming a coalition with the strongly pro-EU Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives dropped the EU referendum pledge that Cameron never wanted to implement in the first place. Politically, the EU remained a fringe issue, except from Conservative backbench rumblings stoked by the right-wing print media or press — lead by The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and The Sun — that kept the issue bubbling under. By 2015, support for the Liberal Democrats had collapsed — as is typical for the minor party in a coalition government — because their core centre-left supporters typically voted against the Conservatives. In the 2015 general election, this Lib. Dem. vote collapse led to a surprising Conservative victory, notably to Cameron too, as national polling had consistently predicted another hung Parliament. The Conservatives had brought back the EU referendum pledge for 2014 and Cameron then Cameron found to his regret that he was going to have to fulfil this pledge. After managing to defeat the referendum for Scottish secession from the United Kingdom and the surprise general election win, emboldened Cameron to get the pledge out of the way sooner rather than later – the prospect of this referendum pledge hanging over the government appeared worse. In an effort to reduce Euroscepticism, Cameron sought and gained from the EU a favourable renegotiation of the terms of membership to bring more benefit to the UK from the EU that he tied to the referendum. For the 23 June 2016 referendum on the EU membership, whilst the Conservatives had no official political policy position either way, its leader Cameron was definitely in favour of remaining in the EU — albeit with the renegotiation of the terms of membership little political mileage was gained — and the party remained profoundly split, as it always had been. The Labour Party policy officially supported remaining in the EU, although with Jeremy Corbyn party leader and his Momentum supporters gave a lacklustre defence against secession. since first being elected in 1984 as a stalwart adherent of Eurosceptic Tony Benn and his far left wing, Corbin had personally advocated throughout his terms as a Labour MP, so he suggested early on in the campaign that he would willingly consider withdrawal contrary to official party policy. The Liberal Democrats were the most adamantly pro-EU party, and since the referendum, pro-Europeanism has been their main policy. The referendum resulted in an overall vote to leave the EU, as opposed to remaining an EU member, by 51.9% to 48.1%, on a turnout of 72.2%. The vote was split between the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, with a majority in England and Wales voting to leave, and a significant majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as an overwhelming 96% in Gibraltar, (a British Overseas Territory), voting to remain. As a result of the referendum, the UK Government notified the EU of its intention to withdraw on 29 March 2017 by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. On 12 April 2019, a new Eurosceptic party, the Brexit Party was officially launched by the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Brexit Party topped the national poll by a large margin with 31.7% gaining 29 seats by running on a single policy of leaving the EU, versus the second-placed Liberal Democrats with 18.5% and 16 seats who promoted themselves as the party of Remain (the total vote for Remain-supporting parties was approximately the same as that for parties supporting a 'no-deal' Brexit). The Conservative Party suffered their lowest ever national vote share of 9.1% with just 4 seats following 3 years of Theresa May's unsuccessful Brexit negotiations. The Labour Party's ambiguous position on Brexit – Corbyn readily accepted the result, but most of the party remained opposed – so leading to their vote share dropping significantly to 14.1% resulting in the loss of half their seats, down from 20 to 10 with the crumbling away of its mainstay support from in the big cities of the UK, especially London, being pro-EU. The rapid growth of the Brexit Party was a contributing factor – along with being unable to navigate an agreeable route between a ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ Brexit, even within her own party, let alone in Parliament – to Theresa May announcing on 24 May that she would step down as the Conservatives’ leader and Prime Minister on 7 June 2019. After the elections, the Eurosceptic Blue Collar Conservative caucus of Conservative MPs was formed. Following the election of Boris Johnson as leader in 2019, the Conservatives’ new Cabinet became a strong supporter of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union and its platform was changed to unanimously support EU withdrawal and there was a systematic campaign to purge by deselecting all pro-Europe MPs and candidates from the party for the 2019 general election, where the Conservative Party adopted a clear ‘hard’ Brexit platform in its manifesto. On 23 January 2020, the Parliament of the United Kingdom ratified a withdrawal agreement from the European Union, which was ratified by the EU Parliament on 30 January. On 31 January, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union after 47 years. During a transition period until 31 December 2020, the UK still followed EU rules and continued free trade and free movement for people within the European Union. Counter-criticism Ben Chu, writing for The Independent, argued against the left-wing notion that the EU is a neoliberal organization, pointing to "high levels of social protection, state-owned rail companies, nationalised utilities and banks, various price controls and industrial interventions". See also Anti-Federalism Balkanization European Referendum Campaign Europeanism Globalisation Institutions of the European Union Radical right in Europe Subsidiarity in the European Union (The rights and responsibilities of member states.) United States of Europe Fourth Reich Withdrawal from the European Union under Article 50 States' rights (US) References Cited sources Political neologisms Politics of the European Union Withdrawal from the European Union

Constructivism (international relations)

In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors. In contrast to other prominent IR approaches and theories (such as realism and rational choice), constructivists see identities and interests of actors as socially constructed and changeable; identities are not static and cannot be exogenously assumed. Similar to rational choice, constructivism does not make broad and specific predictions about international relations; it is an approach to studying international politics, not a substantive theory of international politics. Constructivist analysis can only provide substantive explanations or predictions once the relevant actors and their interests have been identified, as well as the content of social structures. The main theories competing with constructivism are variants of realism, liberalism, and rational choice that emphasize materialism (the notion that the physical world determines political behavior on its own), and individualism (the notion that individual units can be studied apart from the broader systems that they are embedded in). Whereas other prominent approaches conceptualize power in material terms (e.g. military and economic capabilities), constructivist analyses also see power as the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations among actors. Development Nicholas Onuf has been credited with coining the term constructivism to describe theories that stress the socially constructed character of international relations. Since the late 1980s to early 1990s, constructivism has become one of the major schools of thought within international relations. The earliest constructivist works focused on establishing that norms mattered in international politics. Peter J. Katzenstein's edited volume The Culture of National Security compiled works by numerous prominent and emerging constructivists, showing that constructivist insights were important in the field of security studies, an area of International Relations in which realists had been dominant. After establishing that norms mattered in international politics, later veins of constructivism focused on explaining the circumstances under which some norms mattered and others did not. Swathes of constructivist research have focused on norm entrepreneurs: international organizations and law: epistemic communities; speech, argument, and persuasion; and structural configuration as mechanisms and processes for social construction. Alexander Wendt is the most prominent advocate of social constructivism in the field of international relations. Wendt's 1992 article "Anarchy is What States Make of It: the Social Construction of Power Politics" laid the theoretical groundwork for challenging what he considered to be a flaw shared by both neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists, namely, a commitment to a (crude) form of materialism. By attempting to show that even such a core realist concept as "power politics" is socially constructed—that is, not given by nature and hence, capable of being transformed by human practice—Wendt opened the way for a generation of international relations scholars to pursue work on a wide range of issues from a constructivist perspective. Wendt further developed these ideas in his central work, Social Theory of International Politics (1999). Following up on Wendt, Martha Finnemore offered the first "sustained, systematic empirical argument in support of the constructivist claim that international normative structures matter in world politics" in her 1996 book National Interests in International Society. There are several strands of constructivism. On the one hand, there are "conventional" constructivist scholars such as Kathryn Sikkink, Peter Katzenstein, Elizabeth Kier, Martha Finnemore, and Alexander Wendt, who use widely accepted methodologies and epistemologies. Their work has been widely accepted within the mainstream IR community and generated vibrant scholarly discussions among realists, liberals, and constructivists. These scholars hold that research oriented around causal explanations and constitutive explanations is appropriate. Wendt refers to this form of constructivism as "thin" constructivism. On the other hand, there are "critical" radical constructivists who take discourse and linguistics more seriously, and adopt non-positivist methodologies and epistemologies.A third strand, known as critical constructivism, takes conventional constructivists to task for systematically downplaying or omitting class factors. Despite their differences, all strands of constructivism agree that neorealism and neoliberalism pay insufficient attention to social construction in world politics. Theory Constructivism primarily seeks to demonstrate how core aspects of international relations are, contrary to the assumptions of neorealism and neoliberalism, socially constructed. This means that they are given their form by ongoing processes of social practice and interaction. Alexander Wendt calls two increasingly accepted basic tenets of constructivism "that the structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces, and that the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather than given by nature." This does not mean that constructivists believe international politics is "ideas all the way down", but rather is characterized both by material factors and ideational factors. Central to constructivism are the notions that ideas matter, and that agents are socially constructed (rather than given). Constructivist research is focused both on causal explanations for phenomena, as well as analyses of how things are constituted. In the study of national security, the emphasis is on the conditioning that culture and identity exert on security policies and related behaviors. Identities are necessary in order to ensure at least some minimal level of predictability and order. The object of the constructivist discourse can be conceived as the arrival, a fundamental factor in the field of international relations, of the recent debate on epistemology, the sociology of knowledge, the agent/structure relationship, and the ontological status of social facts. The notion that international relations are not only affected by power politics, but also by ideas, is shared by writers who describe themselves as constructivist theorists. According to this view, the fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than strictly material. This leads to social constructivists to argue that changes in the nature of social interaction between states can bring a fundamental shift towards greater international security. Challenging realism During constructivism's formative period, neorealism was the dominant discourse of international relations. Much of constructivism's initial theoretical work challenged basic neorealist assumptions. Neorealists are fundamentally causal structuralists. They hold that the majority of important content to international politics is explained by the structure of the international system, a position first advanced in Kenneth Waltz's Man, the State, and War and fully elucidated in his core text of neorealism, Theory of International Politics. Specifically, international politics is primarily determined by the fact that the international system is anarchic – it lacks any overarching authority, instead it is composed of units (states) which are formally equal – they are all sovereign over their own territory. Such anarchy, neorealists argue, forces States to act in certain ways, specifically, they can only rely on themselves for security (they have to self-help). The way in which anarchy forces them to act in such ways, to defend their own self-interest in terms of power, neorealists argue, explains most of international politics. Because of this, neorealists tend to disregard explanations of international politics at the "unit" or "state" level. Kenneth Waltz attacked such a focus as being reductionist. Constructivism, particularly in the formative work of Wendt, challenges this assumption by showing that the causal powers attributed to "structure" by neorealists are in fact not "given", but rest on the way in which structure is constructed by social practice. Removed from presumptions about the nature of the identities and interests of the actors in the system, and the meaning that social institutions (including anarchy) have for such actors, Wendt argues neorealism's "structure" reveals very little: "it does not predict whether two states will be friends or foes, will recognize each other's sovereignty, will have dynastic ties, will be revisionist or status quo powers, and so on". Because such features of behavior are not explained by anarchy, and require instead the incorporation of evidence about the interests and identities held by key actors, neorealism's focus on the material structure of the system (anarchy) is misplaced. Wendt goes further than this – arguing that because the way in which anarchy constrains states depends on the way in which states conceive of anarchy, and conceive of their own identities and interests, anarchy is not necessarily even a self-help system. It only forces states to self-help if they conform to neorealist assumptions about states as seeing security as a competitive, relative concept, where the gain of security for any one state means the loss of security for another. If states instead hold alternative conceptions of security, either "co-operative", where states can maximise their security without negatively affecting the security of another, or "collective" where states identify the security of other states as being valuable to themselves, anarchy will not lead to self-help at all. Neorealist conclusions, as such, depend entirely on unspoken and unquestioned assumptions about the way in which the meaning of social institutions are constructed by actors. Crucially, because neorealists fail to recognize this dependence, they falsely assume that such meanings are unchangeable, and exclude the study of the processes of social construction which actually do the key explanatory work behind neorealist observations. As a criticism of neorealism and neoliberalism (which were the dominant strands of IR theory during the 1980s), constructivism tended to be lumped in with all approaches that criticized the so-called "neo-neo" debate. Constructivism has therefore often been conflated with critical theory. However, while constructivism may use aspects of critical theory and vice versa, the mainstream variants of constructivism are positivist. In a response to constructivism, John Mearsheimer has argued that ideas and norms only matter on the margins, and that appeals by leaders to norms and morals often reflect self-interest. Identities and interests As constructivists reject neorealism's conclusions about the determining effect of anarchy on the behavior of international actors, and move away from neorealism's underlying materialism, they create the necessary room for the identities and interests of international actors to take a central place in theorising international relations. Now that actors are not simply governed by the imperatives of a self-help system, their identities and interests become important in analysing how they behave. Like the nature of the international system, constructivists see such identities and interests as not objectively grounded in material forces (such as dictates of the human nature that underpins classical realism) but the result of ideas and the social construction of such ideas. In other words, the meanings of ideas, objects, and actors are all given by social interaction. People give objects their meanings and can attach different meanings to different things. Martha Finnemore has been influential in examining the way in which international organizations are involved in these processes of the social construction of actor's perceptions of their interests. In National Interests In International Society, Finnemore attempts to "develop a systemic approach to understanding state interests and state behavior by investigating an international structure, not of power, but of meaning and social value". "Interests", she explains, "are not just 'out there' waiting to be discovered; they are constructed through social interaction". Finnemore provides three case studies of such construction – the creation of Science Bureaucracies in states due to the influence of the UNESCO, the role of the Red Cross in the Geneva Conventions and the World Bank's influence of attitudes to poverty. Studies of such processes are examples of the constructivist attitude towards state interests and identities. Such interests and identities are central determinants of state behaviour, as such studying their nature and their formation is integral in constructivist methodology to explaining the international system. But it is important to note that despite this refocus onto identities and interests—properties of states—constructivists are not necessarily wedded to focusing their analysis at the unit-level of international politics: the state. Constructivists such as Finnemore and Wendt both emphasize that while ideas and processes tend to explain the social construction of identities and interests, such ideas and processes form a structure of their own which impact upon international actors. Their central difference from neorealists is to see the structure of international politics in primarily ideational, rather than material, terms. Norms Constructivist scholars have explored in-depth the role of norms in world politics. Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes have defined “norms” as “a broad class of prescriptive statements – rules, standards, principles, and so forth – both procedural and substantive” that are “prescriptions for action in situations of choice, carrying a sense of obligation, a sense that they ought to be followed”. Norm-based constructivist approaches generally assume that actors tend to adhere to a “logic of appropriateness”. That means that actors follow “internalized prescriptions of what is socially defined as normal, true, right, or good, without, or in spite of calculation of consequences and expected utility”. This logic of appropriateness stands in contrast to the rational choice “logic of consequences”, where actors are assumed to choose the most efficient means to reach their goals on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. Constructivist norm scholarship has investigated a wide range of issue areas in world politics. For example, Peter Katzenstein and the contributors to his edited volume, The Culture of National Security, have argued that states act on security choices not only in the context of their physical capabilities but also on the basis of normative understandings. Martha Finnemore has suggested that international organizations like the World Bank or UNESCO help diffuse norms which, in turn, influence how states define their national interests. Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink have explored how norms affect political change. In doing so, they have stressed the connections between norms and rationality, rather than their opposition to each other. They have also highlighted the importance of “norm entrepreneurs” in advocating and spreading certain norms. Some scholars have investigated the role of individual norms in world politics. For instance, Audie Klotz has examined how the global norm against apartheid developed across different states (the United Kingdom, the United States, and Zimbabwe) and institutions (the Commonwealth, the Organization of African Unity, and the United Nations). The emergence and institutionalization of this norm, she argued, has contributed to the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Nina Tannenwald has made the case that the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945 can be attributed to the strength of a nuclear weapons taboo, i.e., a norm against the use of nuclear weapons. She has argued that this norm has become so deeply embedded in American political and social culture that nuclear weapons have not been employed, even in cases when their use would have made strategic or tactical sense. Michael Barnett has taken an evolutionary approach to trace how the norm of political humanitarianism emerged. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink distinguish between three types of norms: Regulative norms: they "order and constrain behavior" Constitutive norms: they "create new actors, interests, or categories of action" Evaluative and prescriptive norms: they have an "oughtness" quality to them Finnemore, Sikkink, Jeffrey W. Legro and others have argued that the robustness (or effectiveness) of norms can be measured by factors such as: specificity: norms that are clear and specific are more likely to be effective longevity: norms with a history are more likely to be effective universality: norms that make general claims (rather than localized and particularistic claims) are more likely to be effective prominence: norms that are widely accepted among powerful actors are more likely to be effective Jeffrey Checkel argues that there are two common types of explanations for the efficacy of norms: Rationalism: actors comply with norms due to coercion, cost-benefit calculations, and material incentives Constructivism: actors comply with norms due to social learning and socialization In terms of specific norms, constructivist scholars have shown how the following norms emerged: International law: A transnational network of lawyers succeeded in codifying new international legal principles and regulate power politics over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Humanitarian intervention: Over time, conceptions of who was "human" changed, which led states to increasingly engage in humanitarian interventions in the 20th century. Nuclear taboo: A norm against nuclear weapons developed since 1945. Ban on landmines: Activism by transnational advocacy groups led to a norm prohibiting landmines. Norms of sovereignty. Norms against assassination. Election monitoring. Taboo against the weaponization of water. Anti-whaling norm. Anti-torture norm. Research areas Many constructivists analyse international relations by looking at goals, threats, fears, cultures, identities, and other elements of "social reality" as social facts. In an important edited volume, The Culture of National Security, constructivist scholars—including Elizabeth Kier, Jeffrey Legro, and Peter Katzenstein – challenged many realist assumptions about the dynamics of international politics, particularly in the context of military affairs. Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber applied constructivist approaches to understand the evolution of state sovereignty as a central theme in international relations, and works by Rodney Bruce Hall and Daniel Philpott (among others) developed constructivist theories of major transformations in the dynamics of international politics. In international political economy, the application of constructivism has been less frequent. Notable examples of constructivist work in this area include Kathleen R. McNamara's study of European Monetary Union and Mark Blyth's analysis of the rise of Reaganomics in the United States. By focusing on how language and rhetoric are used to construct the social reality of the international system, constructivists are often seen as more optimistic about progress in international relations than versions of realism loyal to a purely materialist ontology, but a growing number of constructivists question the "liberal" character of constructivist thought and express greater sympathy for realist pessimism concerning the possibility of emancipation from power politics. Constructivism is often presented as an alternative to the two leading theories of international relations, realism and liberalism, but some maintain that it is not necessarily inconsistent with one or both. Wendt shares some key assumptions with leading realist and neorealist scholars, such as the existence of anarchy and the centrality of states in the international system. However, Wendt renders anarchy in cultural rather than materialist terms; he also offers a sophisticated theoretical defense of the state-as-actor assumption in international relations theory. This is a contentious issue within segments of the IR community as some constructivists challenge Wendt on some of these assumptions (see, for example, exchanges in Review of International Studies, vol. 30, 2004). It has been argued that progress in IR theory will be achieved when Realism and Constructivism can be aligned or even synthesized. An early example of such synthesis was Jennifer Sterling-Folker's analysis of the United States’ international monetary policy following the Bretton Woods system. Sterling-Folker argued that the U.S. shift towards unilateralism is partially accounted for by realism's emphasis of an anarchic system, but constructivism helps to account for important factors from the domestic or second level of analysis. Recent developments A significant group of scholars who study processes of social construction self-consciously eschew the label "constructivist". They argue that "mainstream" constructivism has abandoned many of the most important insights from linguistic turn and social-constructionist theory in the pursuit of respectability as a "scientific" approach to international relations. Even some putatively "mainstream" constructivists, such as Jeffrey Checkel, have expressed concern that constructivists have gone too far in their efforts to build bridges with non-constructivist schools of thought. A growing number of constructivists contend that current theories pay inadequate attention to the role of habitual and unreflective behavior in world politics, the centrality of relations and processes in constructing world politics, or both. Advocates of the "practice turn" take inspiration from work in neuroscience, as well as that of social theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, that stresses the significance of habit and practices in psychological and social life - essentially calling for greater attention and sensitivity towards the 'every day' and 'taken for granted' activities of international politics Some scholars have adopted the related sociological approach known as Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which extends the early focus of the Practice Turn on the work of Pierre Bourdieu towards that of Bruno Latour and others. Scholars have employed ANT in order to disrupt traditional world political binaries (civilised/barbarian, democratic/autocratic, etc.), consider the implications of a posthuman understanding of IR, explore the infrastructures of world politics, and consider the effects of technological agency. Notable constructivists in international relations Emanuel Adler Michael Barnett Thomas J. Biersteker Mark Blyth Jeffrey T. Checkel Martha Finnemore Ernst B. Haas Peter M. Haas Ian Hacking Ted Hopf Peter J. Katzenstein Margaret Keck Judith Kelley Friedrich Kratochwil Richard Ned Lebow Daniel H. Nexon Qin Yaqing Nicholas Onuf Erik Ringmar Thomas Risse John Ruggie Chris Reus-Smit Kathryn Sikkink J. Ann Tickner Ole Wæver Alexander Wendt Critique by emotional choice theorists Proponents of emotional choice theory argue that constructivist approaches neglect the emotional underpinnings of social interactions, normative behavior, and decision-making in general. They point out that the constructivist paradigm is generally based on the assumption that decision-making is a conscious process based on thoughts and beliefs. It presumes that people decide on the basis of reflection and deliberation. However, cumulative research in neuroscience suggests that only a small part of the brain's activities operate at the level of conscious thinking. The vast majority of its activities consist of unconscious appraisals and emotions. The significance of emotions in decision-making has generally been ignored by constructivist perspectives, according to these critics. Moreover, emotional choice theorists contend that the constructivist paradigm has difficulty incorporating emotions into its models, because it cannot account for the physiological dynamics of emotions. Psychologists and neurologists have shown that emotions are based on bodily processes over which individuals have only limited control. They are inextricably intertwined with people's brain functions and autonomic nervous systems, which are typically outside the scope of standard constructivist models. Emotional choice theory seeks to capture not only the social but also the physiological and dynamic character of emotions. It posits that emotion plays a key role in normative action. Emotions endow norms and identities with meaning. If people feel strongly about norms, they are particularly likely to adhere to them. Rules that cease to resonate at an affective level, however, often come to lose their prescriptive power. Emotional choice theorists note that recent findings in neurology suggest that humans generally feel before they think. So emotions may lead them to prioritize the constructivist “logic of appropriateness” over the rationalist “logic of consequences,” or vice versa. Emotions may also infuse the logic of appropriateness and inform actors how to adjudicate between different norms. See also Constructivism (philosophy of science) Constructivism (psychological school) Emotional choice theory English school of international relations theory International legal theories Logic of appropriateness References External links Read an Interview with Social Constructivist Alexander Wendt Constructivism (international relations) International relations theory