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The main theories of the thriving field of study of public policies have been formulated at institutions of developed countries, mostly by the American academy, based on the particular conditions of policy-making processes of their own country. However, its heuristic premises are considered, initially, as universal and are used extensively in teaching and academic studies around the world. This paper examines the complexities derived from the application of such predominant theoretical approaches to the study and teaching of public policies that are implemented in Latin American countries. Based on an extensive use of specialized literature, 10 public policy variables are identified and organized into two dimensions, one institutional and the other procedural. It is argued that the values of these variables in the countries of this region differ significantly from those observed in the United States, which reveals the explanatory shortcomings of those approaches to account for the particular modalities of public policymaking in these countries.

The Covid-19 crises in the United Kingdom and the United States show how democracies may struggle to confront disasters that are increasingly impinging on the Global North. This paper highlights the extent to which disasters are now 'coming home' to Western democracies and it looks at some of the principal reasons why democracy has not been especially protective, at least in the case of the UK and the US. These include: reconceptualising disaster as a good thing (via 'herd immunity'); the influence of neoliberalism; and the limitations in the circulation of information. A key pandemic-related danger is the conclusion that democracy itself is discredited. Disasters, though, call for a reinvigoration of democracy, not a knee-jerk invocation of autocratic 'emergency' rule. A fundamental problem in the UK and US is that these countries were not democratic enough. The paper underlines the risk of a move towards a disaster-producing system that is self-reinforcing rather than self-correcting., (© 2021 The Authors Disasters © 2021 Overseas Development Institute.)

Support for democracy is based on warmth, inclusiveness, and a general belief that others are well-intentioned. It is also related to a willingness to respect the rights of outgroups which do not necessarily share the views of one's ingroup. In this research, we analysed the relationships between different types of national identity and support for democracy. In two surveys (Study 1; American participants, n = 407 and Study 2; Polish participants; n = 570), we found that support for democracy was negatively linked to collective narcissism, measured in relation to the national group, previously associated with negative intra- and inter-group outcomes. The effect of national narcissism on democracy support was present even when accounting for national identification. In Study 2, we also found that this effect was mediated by social cynicism - a negative view of human nature. In both studies, support for democracy was positively linked to a secure national identity, that is national identification without the narcissistic component, which tends to be associated with positive attitudes towards others. We discuss implications for understanding the role of national identity in support for (il)liberal politics., (© 2021 The British Psychological Society.)

This paper is an introduction to the special issue of the Athens Journal of Social Sciences on Politics. It includes six papers, which relate to various aspects of politics in today's democracies. The first paper examines populism in selecting political parties of the European Union (EU); the second explains a political experiment performed in USA; the third discusses the prospects of the 2022 elections in Brazil; the fourth states that democracies need leaders as this is the case with Israel; the fifth looks at a real threat to democracy which is radicalism and violence using the case of the Slovakian youth; and the last paper examines a case of primary elections of a Greek political party (PASOK). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from archival research, this article explores Thomas Jefferson's understanding of property and his embrace of a political community defined by communal sharing. Tracing the evolution of Jefferson's view on property holdings from the Anglo-Saxons to the American colonies to his speculative vision of ward republics, this paper argues that fears concerning economic and property inequities in the early republic compelled the principal author of the Declaration of Independence to endorse small, communal experiments. Importantly, this reading of Jefferson problematizes strict liberal or republican interpretations of his thought, further calling into question the philosophical heritage of the American republic. By evaluating personal letters from 1804 to 1824, this article offers an alternative reading of Jefferson, one that carefully showcases his wholly original, compelling, and radical democratic thinking. The significance of this heterodox interpretation has far-reaching implications on our understanding of the foundational principles of the early republic as well as how we address the issue of economic inequality in the modern-day United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses distinctions between differing senses of "private," "public" and "political" in the United States to argue for the value of framing food issues as a collective problem that calls for broadscale demands for justice. We argue that food choices do not simply belong to the realm of private preferences and market transactions. Rather, they are a set of decisions that have systemic causes and public consequences. They are shaped and constrained by public policies that underwrite the transportation of food over long distances as well as particular crops and foodstuffs, and by the vendors and advertisers who try to convince us to eat more of the foods they produce. Because the consequences of eating an abundance of empty calories are not easily remedied at the personal level, citizens need to demand public, systemic solutions, including better food information, youth food education, and a healthier food supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the number of official visits to and from the U.S. allows the country to adopt a more democratic system of governance. To achieve its objective, the paper develops a model that derives the conditions under which a host invites a guest to persuade or pressure for democratic improvement, and the conditions under which the guest accepts an invitation to visit and decides to improve the quality of democratic governance after the visit. To test our hypothesis, we introduce novel variables that indicate the number of leader's trips to the U.S., and the number of visits of U.S. Presidents and Secretaries of State to the country, from 1960 to 2015. The estimation results show that the official visits have a statistically significant positive effect on democracy. These results are robust. The paper also uses 3SLS to deal with potential endogeneity. The estimation confirms our previous findings that the official visits have a statistically significant positive effect on democracy. Finally, we explore the channels of transmission and find that American administrations use bilateral trade flows and U.S. aid as an incentive for countries to democratize. This supports our model predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Applied & Theoretical Social Sciences is the property of Journal of Applied & Theoretical Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the twenty-first century, voter choice and the broader political debate are within the reach of those that can access and channel the vast streams of user data that are generated online. How digital platforms utilize personal user data to influence the outcome of democratic processes has become a central issue that liberal democracies must confront. The paper explores whether competition law has a role to play when it comes to addressing this intersection of Big Tech, data, and democracy. It first sets out the democratic roots of competition or antitrust law in the United States and the European Union. From these, the paper deduces that competition law cannot remain inactive when it comes to maintaining a democratic society in the face of the abilities of Big Tech to influence democratic processes and outcomes. The paper then goes a step further and asks what role competition law could play in this regard. Should democratic values simply be reflected in the procedural set-up of antitrust law, or is there a role for democratic values in the substantive provisions as well? And if so, does antitrust law's focus on keeping market power in check suffice to fulfill its role in a democratic society, or does this role require the law to specifically target antidemocratic market behavior as anticompetitive harm? In navigating these questions, the paper contributes to the ongoing debate on political antitrust and sets out an ambitious research agenda on how to carry this discussion forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists in democratically "free" countries have faced harassment from those external to the newsroom for decades, though that has recently increased in the United States by many accounts. To assess the effects of such harassment in the United States, 32 journalists were interviewed and more than 500 surveyed about their experiences with harassment, and how it has affected their professional work. Journalists' emotions, gender, and the frequency at which they experience harassment were predictors of affect-driven work behaviors such as avoiding interviewing someone, being less active on social media, and even considering leaving journalism. Younger journalists were also more likely to engage in affect-driven work behaviors. Harassment also affected journalists' work attitude of job satisfaction—specifically incivility and disruptive harassment. This type of harassment is likely to decrease job satisfaction while supervisor support and larger organizational size are likely to increase satisfaction. In sum, harassment from viewers, readers, and strangers affects how journalists act and think about their work. This research adds to literature on Affective Events Theory by highlighting harassment from organizational outsiders (readers, viewers, and strangers) as an affective event with significant affect-driven behaviors and attitudes. Furthermore, there are practical implications for practitioners discussed at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia i Polityka is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One of Tocqueville's best-known empirical claims in Democracy in America is that there is no national-level public administration in the United States. He asserts definitively and repeatedly that "administrative centralization does not exist" there. However, in scattered passages throughout the text, Tocqueville points to multiple federal agencies that contemporary historians and APD scholars characterize as instances of a growing national administrative system, such as the Post Office Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I reevaluate Tocqueville's treatment of bureaucracy in America in light of this evidence. I contend that Tocqueville, perhaps in spite of himself, reveals even the most paradigmatic examples of active, democratic self-government in Democracy in America —townships and other voluntary associations—to be embedded in and causally supported by a network of interrelated, centralized public administrative institutions. Crucially, Tocqueville never resolves the tension between his acknowledgment of the causal power of these institutions and his claims that they do not exist. This new picture of the empirical and normative complexity of Tocqueville's treatment of bureaucratic institutions offers a rich set of conceptual resources for contesting, among other claims, the political construction of nostalgia for a lost age of do-it-yourself White settler democracy in a time before bureaucracy in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper posits that the global COVID-19 pandemic shock propelled the rational voters to the ballot box in 2020 presidential election to repudiate the 45th President of the United States (POTUS) for mishandling the pandemic and for propagating baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation, thus the resuscitation of representative democracy in the United States. We utilize a composite linear equation to derive the democracy strangulation coefficients and the democracy resuscitation coefficients to highlight the magnitude of the strangulation and the resuscitation. In addition, we derive and compute the democracy resuscitation index from which one can conclude that less than one percent of the net 7,052,770 winning votes barely resuscitated representative democracy in 2020. The strangulation of representative democracy is still ongoing because many aspiring candidates in the Republican Party, running for political offices at different levels, have strategically adopted the democracy strangulation playbook that the 45th President embedded in the Republican Party in order to achieve ochlocratic autocracy if they win and control the three coequal branches of government in 2025. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate how external election interventions influence satisfaction with democracy. We expect that mere knowledge about a foreign intervention will not affect system support. Instead, only those who believe that the external influence campaign had a decisive impact on the election outcome should see a reduction in democratic satisfaction. Furthermore, since electoral winners are likely to think that their preferred party provides superior policy outputs, supporters of winning parties should be less affected by their beliefs in the decisiveness of an influence campaign. Finally, we expect that those who place a high value on in-group loyalty will be more likely to engage in motivated reasoning. Thus, in-group loyalty should cause electoral winners to discount the substantive impact of a given electoral intervention, whereas it should have the opposite effect for losers. Our analysis relies on US survey data, and it uncovers broad support for our theoretical expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A majority of Americans spend a substantial amount of time at work where they have little to no say over many issues—a phenomenon that philosophers have likened to a "private government" that resembles a dictatorship. Is this because Americans are indifferent to or even prefer to work for firms that resemble dictatorships? To answer this question, we field a conjoint experiment on a nationally-representative sample of Americans to isolate public preferences over "corporate regime type." We find that Americans prefer workplace democracy. In a second experiment, we find that most Americans support workplace democracy even after being exposed to framing emphasizing democratization's costs. The results suggest that social scientists must look beyond public opinion to understand the lack of workplace democracy in the United States. This article forges new ground by applying a political science lens to corporate governance—a field ripe with politics but bereft of political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research indicates that affective polarization pervades contemporary democracies worldwide. Although some studies identify party leaders as polarizing agents, affective polarization has been predominantly conceptualized as a product of in-/out-party feelings. This study compares levels of party affective polarization (PAP) and leader affective polarization (LAP) cross-nationally, using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Applying like–dislike scales and an identical index to both concepts, we reveal that while the two strongly correlate, LAP is systematically lower than PAP. The United States emerges as an exceptional case, being the only country where LAP significantly exceeds PAP. Drawing on regime input/output and institutions as theoretical building blocks, we explore cross-national variations and show that the relative strength of LAP vis-à-vis PAP is increased by presidential regime type, poor government performance, and low party system fragmentation. The findings of this study contribute to the thriving research on affective polarization and personalization of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apart from offering a review on lawfare, this article considers situations where one less-law-abiding actor – namely, a non-state actor – uses the International Humanitarian Law (IHL)'s compliance of its opponent to obtain leverage on the battlefield. Using the United States (US) as an example, it appears that IHL's compliance is yet not to be subjugated by the pursuit of military interests. Broadening the analysis to NATO nations due to the similarity of their IHL's conceptualization and political proximity, it defends that IHL shall remain respected by these states as disregarding it would be a treason of their political regime and the moral grounding binding governments with their populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores political issues concerning nonpartisan elections for state education officials in the U.S. Topics discussed include the connection between state education governance and democracy, the history of state education departments from the initial creation of the state superintendent role in Iowa in 1846 to the creation of state boards of education, and the distinction of the nonpartisan election procedures in California and Washington compared to other U.S. states.

Previous research has shown that presidential debates have "minimal effects" on aggregate electoral preferences because they mainly reinforce people's pre-existing political preferences. However, most of what we know about the behavioural effects of debates comes from research conducted in the United States and other institutionalised democracies. We re-evaluate the effects of debates on electoral preferences by focusing on Latin American elections. Given higher levels of electoral volatility, weaker partisan brands, lower partisanship, and more personalised voter linkages, we expect that debates play a significant role in shaping vote choice in Latin America. We test these expectations by conducting an analysis of presidential debates on aggregated vote preferences in thirty-two elections across fourteen Latin American countries from 2002 to 2019. Our results show that presidential debates shape electoral preferences in countries with weakly institutionalised party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trump presidency generated concern about democratic backsliding and renewed interest in measuring the national democratic performance of the United States. However, the US has a decentralized form of federalism that administers democratic institutions at the state level. Using 51 indicators of electoral democracy from 2000 to 2018, I develop a measure of subnational democratic performance, the State Democracy Index. I then test theories of democratic expansion and backsliding based in party competition, polarization, demographic change, and the group interests of national party coalitions. Difference-in-differences results suggest a minimal role for all factors except Republican control of state government, which dramatically reduces states' democratic performance during this period. This result calls into question theories focused on changes within states. The racial, geographic, and economic incentives of groups in national party coalitions may instead determine the health of democracy in the states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warning signs for the health of the American democracy abound. These challenges have multiple manifestations and multiple roots, but media and the Internet, more broadly, are implicated in prominent ways. Schools, the institutions charged with educating current and future generations, have a role to play in supporting the preparation of an informed citizenry. This study examines the extent to which state level legislation supports the provision of civically oriented media literacy education. To do so, we first identify several critically needed media literacy education dimensions and then examine how well existing legislation from all 50 states responds to these identified needs. Findings reveal that not only is there an overall dearth of K-12 media literacy policy, but definitions and corresponding resources remain sparse and varied. For schools to fulfill their role of providing young people with the knowledge, skills, and commitments to participate and promote a vibrant and informed democracy, this study concludes that more must be done to support media literacy education within state level policy. Prior State of Knowledge: Studies indicate that few young people in the United States receive significant learning opportunities to develop and practice media literacy-related skills. While federal legislation is valuable to help set the tone for the nation, state support for local innovation has long been a key strategy for supporting school reform efforts. Novel Contributions: Accordingly, this study examines the extent to which state level legislation supports the provision of civically oriented media literacy education. Practical Implications: Findings reveal that media literacy policy remains the exception, rather than the norm, in states across country – which suggests the need for all state legislators to consider the importance of developing and passing policy that would provide the infrastructure their states need to support young people in learning media literacy skills on a routine basis in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While dislike of opposing parties, that is, affective polarization, is a defining feature of contemporary politics, research on this topic largely centers on the United States. We introduce an approach that analyzes affective polarization between pairs of parties, bridging the US two-party system and multiparty systems in other democracies. Analyzing survey data from twenty Western democracies since the mid-1990s, first, we show that partisans' dislike of out-parties is linked to elite policy disagreements on economic issues and, increasingly over time, also to cultural issues. Secondly, we argue and empirically demonstrate that governing coalition partners in parliamentary democracies display much warmer feelings toward each other than we would expect based on elite policy (dis)agreements. Third, we show that radical right parties are disliked much more intensely than we would expect based on policy disputes and coalition arrangements. These findings highlight the policy-based and institutional underpinnings of affective polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing how democracy varies within countries is paramount to the subnational turn in comparative politics. Despite recent contributions, we still lack a comparable measure of democracy for provinces inside countries. To overcome this limitation, I present the Index of Subnational Electoral Democracy (ISED), a measure that tracks the electoral dimension of democracy across the provinces of nine Latin American countries, the United States, Canada, and India for a period of roughly 40 years, making it the largest dataset on subnational regime outcomes to date. I then use the ISED to assess the democratic trajectories of Argentinian, Brazilian, Mexican, and Indian states, revealing that: 1) Indian provinces have been, on average, more democratic than their Latin American counterparts. 2) The relative position of provincial regimes within these countries has been remarkably stable over time. 3) Most subnational units in the Americas have had "low intensity" regimes. 4) Subnational regime hybridity has been the norm rather than the exception, and that 5) for the Latin American cases under consideration, democracy and development are positively connected at the local level. I conclude by outlining the ISED's research applications and reflecting on the implications of these five conclusions for future research on subnational democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although public historians and public intellectuals were present in the United States long before the 1970s and 80s, in those decades these terms emerged as focal points for intensified debates about the roles to which they pointed. Those debates shared more than chronological proximity; they had common questions and concerns. As The Public Historian marks its forty-fifth year, comparing discussions about public historians to those about public intellectuals casts new light on a question posed at the outset and present since: what is public history? This comparison highlights the development of public history as a process—rather than the public historian as a role or public history as a product—and locates it in a broader reconfiguration of academic authority in the public sphere over the last fifty years, which included “public intellectuals” and movements for public sociology, public philosophy, and public humanities. Whereas the authoritative voice remained central to the role of the public intellectual, the process of public history was the ground for a shift to shared authority. Developments in theory and practice in the field of public history therefore resonate beyond it: they constitute one of the richest bodies of work grappling with the always-contested place of experts, professionals, and intellectuals in American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic engagement is central to democracy, yet historically and today, the United States has excluded certain groups and denied them their participation rights. Even where there has been progress toward inclusion, young people have been largely excluded from meaningful participation in their communities. While there are historical and developmental rationales for this view of childhood, such an approach is suboptimal and even harmful in some cases. Equally important, this construct of childhood fails to recognize the full personhood of young people and see them as rights holders in our communities. This Article calls for greater recognition of young people as rights holders and, correspondingly, more robust efforts to foster meaningful youth participation in their communities, from the local to the national level. Drawing on our own work with children and adolescents and other research that shows children of all ages can contribute in developmentally appropriate ways, this Article argues that acknowledging young people as rights holders and creating and sustaining opportunities for meaningful youth participation would result in better outcomes for children and adolescents, their communities, and the country as a whole. This Article employs a children’s rights framework to analyze youth participation in the United States. A children’s rights lens reveals several important points. First, it unpacks the cluster of rights that constitute meaningful youth participation, going beyond the narrow conception of participation as only the right to vote. Second, it reveals how far the U.S. legal and regulatory framework is from supporting children’s right to be heard in matters that affect their lives. Third, and perhaps most significantly, it provides the state and other stakeholders with a model and examples of ensuring meaningful opportunities for youth participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this manuscript, we examine the impact of voting for the winning candidate on satisfaction with democracy. While extensive evidence exists documenting this relationship, it is almost entirely correlational in nature. We take advantage of survey timing during the 2000 post-election period in the U.S. when the vast majority of respondents were uncertain about who would win the presidency. Employing 2000–2002 panel data and using a difference-in-differences model, we are able to establish a relationship between electoral outcome and satisfaction with democracy that appears only for respondents interviewed once the outcome became official. We find an increase in satisfaction among winners and a parallel decrease among losers from 2000 to 2002. Importantly, our design allows us to go further than most studies to make causal claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2022 midterm elections tested both American democracy's resilience and the referendum theory of midterm elections. Democracy met the test better than the theory. For several reasons, Democrats lost far fewer House seats than referendum models predicted given Biden's low approval ratings, inflation, and an unhappy electorate. Trump's meddling in nomination politics on behalf of his big lie and the Court's Dobbs decision put democracy and abortion on the agenda, mobilizing Democrats and redefining what was at stake in the election. The referendum was also blunted by hardened political attitudes that minimized partisan defections and by independents who voted for Democrats despite negative opinions of Biden. Overall voting patterns showed record levels of continuity and cohesion in 2022, reiterating the stark political divisions that have emerged over the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Politico is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The world is experiencing a democratic recession, and in the United States, core democratic beliefs are under attack. As a key social organization, academic institutions have a central role in the protection of democracy. Boards, presidents, faculty, and students have the ability—and responsibility—to protect and advance democracy. A course in American government that interrogates the underpinnings of democracy and the support of voting rights for everyone in the academic and local community is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Part of the Solution" article describes how the food industry has evolved its strategies to respond to critics and government regulation by co-option and appeasement to create a less hostile environment. Rather than focusing research on single industries it would be more efficient and productive to focus on corporate political activities (CPAs) that directly influence democratic institutions and processes having authority over laws, policy, rules and regulations that govern industry. The most influential and direct CPA are election campaign donations, lobbying, and the reverse revolving door. In the United States those CPA flow from rights of corporations that underlie all industry strategies. The US history of how corporations obtained their rights is described, and research about the affirmative effects of those three CPA is summarized. Health research is needed about those CPA and their effects on health law, policy and regulation in the United States and other nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on democratic attitudes has recently turned to examine citizens' views about the performance of specific democratic institutions in their country. Drawing on data from the European Social Survey (ESS6) and the Bright Line Watch Project (BLW) in the United States, this article argues that such evaluative questions carry high levels of cognitive complexity that lead to gender gaps in item response rates. We then show that those gender gaps are present at every level of political knowledge and tend to be wider the less respondents know about the political system. Since women also tend to be more critical of democratic institutions, these results indicate that item non-response biases can make researchers underestimate overall levels of dissatisfaction with democracy, as well as overlook specific groups that may be particularly dissatisfied with the performance of certain parts of the democratic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article Sir Geoffrey reflects on democracy in the context of the United States, with special attention to the events of recent years both in the United States and internationally. A drift away from democracy is noted and an agenda for reform of the United States system is advanced for the purpose of strengthening democracy in a country which is a role model for many others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece offers an extended critique of one aspect of the so-called "independent state legislature" theory. That theory, in brief, holds that the federal Constitution gives state legislatures, and withholds from any other state entity, the power to regulate federal elections. Proponents ground their theory in two provisions of the federal Constitution: Article I's Elections Clause, which provides that "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof," and Article II's Presidential Electors Clause, which provides that "[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." Proponents defend the theory as consistent with the text and structure of the Constitution, as well as some nineteenth-century practice. While the independent state legislature theory (ISLT) purports to elevate state legislatures in the name of popular sovereignty and democracy, in fact it dramatically expands the power of the federal judiciary at the expense of both. At base, the ISLT is primarily a claim of authority on the part of federal courts: it inverts a core principle of judicial federalism by maintaining that the federal Constitution empowers federal courts to override the judgments of state courts, state executive-branch officials, and state voters about the meaning of state law. In the hands of the current Supreme Court, this assertion of interpretive supremacy imposes on the states a narrow mode of statutory interpretation--textualism--whose key justifications are largely inapplicable to the states, with their myriad and varied institutional arrangements. The ISLT is fatally inconsistent with basic precepts of both federalism and the separation of powers. But more than that, the ISLT is a lawless power grab by the federal courts masquerading as deference to a romanticized vision of the state legislature that fails to take state institutional design choices seriously on their own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When state courts interpret successful ballot initiatives, they characteristically rely upon formal sources of legal meaning to attribute an intent to the voters that is usually a fiction. One potential response to this interpretive dilemma is for state courts to rely upon originalist or textualist methods and associated populist rhetoric to assign an original public meaning to the law that was presumably understood and endorsed by the voters. This approach substitutes the fiction of popular intent with the pretense that "the People" can speak with a single voice through the initiative process, and that state courts can neutrally and objectively hear and articulate their will. Because courts can use originalist or textualist methods to interpret successful ballot initiatives in a manner that is consistent with their own preferences, while attributing their choices to the People, this approach is profoundly undemocratic. State courts could instead forthrightly acknowledge that voters lack an ascertainable intent on most interpretive problems, and that a ballot initiative's original public meaning on the precise question at issue is often ambiguous. Interpretive litigation is therefore frequently, and necessarily, a continuation of the lawmaking process. Like other policy choices in a pluralistic democracy, the resulting decision should reflect the most justifiable option on the merits under the circumstances based on reasoned consideration of the relevant legal, ethical, and sociological criteria. Drawing loosely upon progressive-era jurisprudential theory, I label this approach "sociological jurisprudence." While prior efforts to instantiate sociological jurisprudence have foundered on legitimate concerns regarding the judiciary's limited institutional competence and questionable democratic pedigree, this Essay contends that those concerns could be counteracted in the initiative context by assigning decision-making authority over interpretive disputes to a deliberative jury. The deliberative jury would be presented with data, views, and arguments regarding the relevant legal, ethical, and sociological considerations, and charged with selecting the most justifiable understanding of the initiative based on this information. State courts would perform the limited roles of referring cases to this interpretive process and reviewing the constitutionality of the deliberative jury's decision. This approach would promote federalism's experimental spirit and direct democracy's preference for lawmaking by the people, while counteracting characteristic problems with the initiative process and improving the quality of constitutional dialogue within the states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Informacion Comercial Espanola Revista de Economia is the property of S.G.E.E.I.P.C., Secretaria de Estado de Comercio, Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What are the downstream political consequences of state activity explicitly targeting an ethnic minority group? This question is well studied in the comparative context, but less is known about the effects of explicitly racist state activity in liberal democracies such as the United States. We investigate this question by looking at an important event in American history—the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. We find that Japanese Americans who were imprisoned or had family who were imprisoned are significantly less politically engaged and that these patterns of disengagement increase with detention length. Using an identification strategy leveraging quasi-random camp assignment, we also find that camp experience matters: those who went to camps that witnessed intragroup violence or demonstrations experienced sharper declines, suggesting that group fragmentation is an important mechanism of disengagement. Taken together, our findings contribute to a growing literature documenting the demobilizing effects of ethnically targeted detention and expand our understanding of these forces within the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to trial by jury in criminal cases is basic to the design of American criminal justice and to the structure of American government. Guaranteed by Article III of the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment, and every one of the original state constitutions, the criminal jury was seen as critically important not only to the protection of individual rights but also to the architecture of American democracy. The vast majority of criminal prosecutions today, however, are resolved without even the prospect of community review by a jury. Despite the textual clarity of the guarantee, the Supreme Court has long recognized a "petty offense" exception to the right to trial by jury. As systems of mass adjudication and hyper-incarceration have developed over the past several decades, a parallel process of collateral consequences has also arisen and is now well-documented. Recognizing that a conviction for even a low-level offense can have devastating effects, some courts have begun to narrowly interpret the "petty offense" exception, especially where a conviction could have severe immigration-related consequences. As a result, some jurisdictions now provide stronger procedural protections for non-citizen defendants than for citizen defendants charged with similar offenses. Although these courts are certainly correct in characterizing these offenses as "serious" and thereby providing those defendants a right to a jury trial, their reasoning imports a defendant-specific subjectivity that is in tension with prior Supreme Court guidance, and the results pose questions of legitimacy as different defendants are treated differently because of citizenship status. As advocates push to expand the right to trial by jury, the Supreme Court should revisit the "petty offense" exception in light of the expansive web of collateral consequences that has developed in the past few decades. In Ramos v. Louisiana, the Court grappled with the question of stare decisis and overruled decades-old precedent on the constitutionality of non-unanimous jury verdicts, recognizing that the Court should be most willing to reconsider precedent in cases involving constitutional criminal procedure. At the same time, state legislatures should address the problem by extending the state right to jury trials to cover all criminal prosecutions. The implications of such changes would extend beyond a procedural reform that would affect the rights of individual defendants. Expansion of the jury trial right would constitute a meaningful structural reform in democratizing criminal justice at a time when such change is needed to establish the popular legitimacy of the criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American federal and state elections are largely run by local officials. Although election law is almost entirely determined by the federal government and the states, elections are actually conducted by thousands of different county and city elections offices. This decentralization of election administration has often, and fairly, been criticized as resulting in undesirable interlocal variation in the application of election rules, inefficiency, and racial discrimination. Yet, in 2020, local election administration, particularly in large urban areas, was a source of strength. Local officials proved to be resilient, innovative, and attentive to local conditions. The record-high turnout in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic was in considerable part due to their efforts to make voting easier and more accessible. These efforts, in turn, have triggered a reaction, with many states adopting new laws intended to curtail local authority. This Article examines the local role in the 2020 election, together with the state pushback of 2021, as a study of both the surprising significance of local officials in promoting democracy and the place of local government in our intergovernmental system more generally. Local election offices are among the least formally empowered units of local government. They are charged solely with implementing state laws and policies. Yet, the 2020 election indicates they can exercise their authority to promote democracy in their communities. On the other hand, as with local governments generally, local power in election administration is fragile and can be stripped away by hostile state-level forces. By showcasing the importance of local elections officials, the 2020 election has made them a new site of conflict over the strength of American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how guns emerged as both urgent topics of dialogue and common features of everyday life for 228 students and their teachers in six communities across the United States who participated in the Digital Democratic Dialogue (3D) Project, a year long social design-based experiment aimed at foregrounding youth voice and fostering connection across lines of geographic and ideological difference. We trace the myriad ways that guns literally and discursively shaped the multiple ecological contexts of the 3D Project in order to detail youth sociopolitical learning and extend traditional models of civic education. We propose a paradigm of speculative civic literacies that privileges a collaborative push toward democratic interrogation and innovation over integration into existing civic and political structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incumbents often seek to wield power in ways that are formally legal but informally proscribed. Why do voters endorse these power grabs? Prior literature focuses on polarization. We propose instead that many voters are majoritarian, in that they view popularly elected leaders' actions as inherently democratic – even when those actions undermine liberal democracy. We find support for this claim in two original survey experiments, arguing that majoritarians' desire to give wide latitude to elected officials is an important but understudied threat to liberal democracy in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Satisfaction with democracy is a critical supporting element of any democratic process, though a robust literature demonstrates that such satisfaction is contingent on numerous personal preferences and situational contexts. Perhaps most disconcerting, satisfaction is highly correlated with electoral (mis)fortune—winner or loser status. We theorize that this connection is moderated by a fundamental group orientation in American politics: racial resentment. Satisfaction with democracy should increase among white electoral losers as racial resentment increases when Republican candidates win and decrease as racial resentment strengthens when Democratic candidates win. In both scenarios, the connection between electoral (mis)fortune and satisfaction are moderated by a perception of whether the political system under the incoming president will be (unfairly) working better for others—black Americans—who are perceived to be less deserving of benefits. We find support for this argument using ANES presidential election data from 2004–2016. These results are robust to examination of only validated votes, panel data support the causal direction our theory posits, and we find that racial resentment uniquely moderates this relationship compared to related potential moderators, like ideological self-identification and racial stereotypes. More than petulance in the face of loss, (dis)satisfaction with democracy is a product of group orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: While the World Health Organization (WHO) has established guidance on COVID-19 surveillance, little is known about implementation of these guidelines in federations. which fragment authority across multiple levels of government. This study examines how subnational governments in federal democracies collect and report data on COVID-19 cases and mortality associated with COVID-19. Methods: We collected data from subnational government websites in 15 federal democracies to construct indices of COVID-19 data quality. Using bivariate and multivariate regression, we analyzed the relationship between these indices and indicators of state capacity, the decentralization of resources and authority, and the quality of democratic institutions. We supplement these quantitative analyses with qualitative case studies of subnational COVID-19 data in Brazil, Spain, and the United States. Findings: Subnational governments in federations vary in their collection of data on COVID-19 mortality, testing. hospitalization, and demographics. There are statistically significant associations (p < 0.05) between subnational data quality and key indicators of public health system capacity, fiscal decentralization, and the quality of democratic institutions. Case studies illustrate the importance of both governmental and civil-society institutions that foster accountability. Conclusions: The quality of subnational COVID-19 surveillance data in federations depends in part on public health system capacity, fiscal decentralization, and the quality of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]