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In the article, the authors offer information on the papers/articles to be submitted for the special issue on topics like American evangelicalism, White Evangelical America, and representative democracy.

On balance, Africa generally has made some progress in good governance under liberal, multiparty democracy in the past two or three decades. But there are well‐noted, wide‐ranging dysfunctions in governance, which inhibit human development and fulfilment. Several papers have been published, which propose various solutions to the dysfunctions. Among them are proposals for types of all‐inclusive democratic politics. I examine a couple of these proposals and conclude that they generate formidable feasibility challenges, even for the types of democracy they advocate. This paper focuses on Ghana, but with a thrust intended to have import for the sustainability of democracy across Africa. The argument is basically that the operating democratic constitutions in Africa provide a normatively desirable liberal, multiparty democracy, which promises a reasonably good life for all without exception; but practice has resulted in enduring, multiple deprivations and low standards of living for millions of citizens. The reason for the undesirably wide gap between the ideal and the practice is not because multiparty democracy is inconsistent with African traditions or is otherwise not good for Africans, as some scholars claim, but because of those who tend to run it—their general incompetence, including or marked by their intellectual and ethical inability to rise above partisan limitations and failure to leverage the efficiencies of the free market system. The proposed solution for Ghana, intended to eliminate or significantly mitigate the dysfunctions just mentioned and to sustain the multiparty democracy, is to redesign the National Development Planning Commission (NPDC), a constitutional organ which serves the partisan executive, into a robust, non‐partisan, independent institution, anchored on the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances, to enable it to do at least the following two things: (a) to produce, with representation from key stakeholders, including political parties, technocratically objective, competent, efficient and accountable rolling and all‐inclusive National Development Plans (NDPs) in place of vote‐inspired and partisan manifestoes, with budgets approved by parliament; and (b) to monitor, evaluate and report on the governing party's implementation of the NDPs to parliament. Democracy will become sustainable as the general quality of lives grows steadily under the continuous implementation of all‐inclusive NDPs, which are to be crafted to efficiently and sustainably deliver public goods and services that serve district, regional and the common needs and interests of all Ghanaians rather than the interests of the few and powerful or, at best, of majorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy is a political system that has some universal appeal, and, this seems to invest it with some kind of legitimacy over other systems of government. But this in no way suggests that it is homogenously conceived or practiced across the world—particularly in Western and African countries. Yet there is some supposition that some cultures have (almost) perfected their practice of democracy while others are learning its rudiments. This tends to arouse the philosopher's interest in the conceptual and practical bases for the supposition. In African philosophy, the notion of consensus has often been touted as a kernel and mēnsūra for evidence of democracy in traditional African thought. This paper examines the propriety of this move, taking into account the specific positions of the Ghanaian philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye. It explores the political dynamics of contemporary Africa and brings out the challenges and prospects for the sort of democracy that is being practiced—or, at least, is said to be practiced—in Africa. It is often debated in African political thought whether consensus or majoritarian rule (characterized by such activities as voting and multipartism) defines democracy, but the paper argues that neither of them really brings about democracy. It then highlights the humanistic end of democracy. Using the Ghanaian experience especially, the paper proposes ways of improving the understanding and practice of democracy in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how a structure of Weberian rational domination has been built and consolidated in Spain since 1959, the year when the so‐called Economic Stabilization Plan was approved. This sort of economic constitution represents one of the most important foundations of a technocratic regime that survived the death of a dictator (General Francisco Franco), not only transcending the traditional differentiations between autocratic and democratic regimes but also offering a different perspective to the debate about the degree of continuity and rupture attained by the Spanish political transition in the 1970s. We analyze the institutions, leadership, most influential networks, political discourse, and historical myths through a theory of power and elites to examine the Spanish case. With this remarkable example of structural transformation and institutional resilience over decades, we also propose a more complex and multidimensional approach that could be fruitful to understanding some of the problems of political representation that current democracies are undergoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a democracy, when a group of deliberators have a set of differing (and contrary) views and beliefs about a particular policy or action, p, a recommended course of action is for them to pursue, and ultimately reach, a consensus on p. The pursuit of consensus allows deliberators to 'reach over the aisle' in accommodating dissenting views through rational dialogue until a consensual agreement is reached by all the deliberators. What fuels this pursuit of consensus is the 'will to consensus'—a 'frame of mind' or a 'disposition' to resolve disagreements into a consensus. In this paper, I will raise some conceptual problems with positing a 'will to consensus' that is prior to, and supervenes on, the rational discussion of deliberators. Instead of a 'will to consensus', democratic theorists should be content with the minimal claim of a 'will to dialogue'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes Rawls's moral psychology and the claim that a just society must foster a sufficiently strong sense of justice. When Rawls investigates the development of the sense of justice under a just basic structure, he tacitly narrows down the focus: he only demonstrates the development of a sense of justice on the premise that all members of society are already in possession of a full‐fledged sense of justice, save the one individual under investigation. This begs the question, largely presupposing what needs to be explained, namely, how citizens at large develop a sense of justice. Rawls's narrowing of perspective leads to distortions in the analysis of stability, particularly with regard to a property‐owning democracy. However, in lesser known parts of his work, Rawls offers clues for a more plausible account. Here, the idea is that institutions must be structured such that they enable all of us to nurture the sense of justice of each of us. With this idea of collective self‐transformation in place, it becomes clear that economic institutions must be broadly democratized because of their profound educational role. Thus, the choice between a property‐owning democracy and liberal socialism falls more strongly upon the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper was to assess the effects of social inequality, democracy, and economic growth on the climate justice performance of a nation. To achieve this goal, the research technique Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS‐SEM) was applied to a sample of 133 countries selected based on indicators available in international databases in 2019. The main results of the analysis were: (a) the effect of democracy on the performance of climate justice is positive; (b) the moderating effect of inequality on the relationship between democracy and climate justice is negative; and (c) economic growth has a U‐shaped relationship with climate justice performance, which indicates the existence of a Kuznets curve for climate justice performance. Based on these results, the main theoretical implications of this study were the discoveries that: (a) the weakening of democratic institutions may be associated with increased social inequality, which reduces the implementation of climate policies aimed at guaranteeing justice; (b) forms of cooperation and financing of climate actions at the global level may be ineffective only if the quality of democracy in vulnerable countries is observed, which can be explained by the persistence of high social inequality; (c) allowing women access to income, education and health might be ways of reducing gender inequality and improving the level of adaptation of countries vulnerable to climate challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the importance of people and modern citizenship in the functioning of democracy. Topics include politics and morality, political autonomy, risks in capitalistic economic system, feminism, racial discrimination, and minority protection. The concept of peopleness has been discussed.

That parties fulfil their pre‐election pledges once they are in government is a fundamental idea of many democracy models. This paper addresses the question of whether the government/opposition status of their party affects how much citizens want governments to fulfil their promises. We hypothesize that interest‐driven, rational voters are more likely to prefer their own party to keep its promises and investigate whether this rationale is impacted by public opinion and expert views. The analysis is based on a survey experiment conducted in Australia and Austria. It finds that voters broadly adhere to the democratic principle of expecting pledge fulfilment but, at the same time, some take a rational approach to government promises. The opinions of the public and experts mitigate but do not change this effect. Another key finding is the significant difference in the preference for promise keeping versus promise breaking between government and opposition voters in the Austrian case, the country with the more heterogeneous and polarized political system. This paper contributes to the literature on voters' attitudes on democracy and pledge fulfilment by showing that voters are normatively driven but a significant number of voters deviate and instead follow the rational voter logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on options for reforming European governance. White Paper of the European Commission.

This review article presents the results of an exploratory study for illuminating the state of the research concerning public policy in Colombia. A core assumption of the project is that the national capacity (intellectual capital) for producing relevant and thorough research in public policy, theory and practice, is a key element for the quality of its democracy and the sustainability of the system. A systematic documentary review of the research papers produced between 2008 and 2018 was conducted, spanning a total of 1010 papers. The results point to the relevance of continuing this type of study within Colombia and to the need of involving all the stakeholders in a dialogue about how to improve the country's capacity to design, implement, and evaluate sound public policies. Related Articles: Asongu, Simplice A. 2016. "Sino‐African Relations: A Review and Reconciliation of Dominant Schools of Thought." Politics & Policy 44(2): 351–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12152. De Lombaerde, Philippe. 2015. "The Political Economy of Trade Protection in Colombia." Politics & Policy 43(6): 855–86. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12140. Seefeldt, Jennapher Lunde. 2020. "Lessons from the Lithium Triangle: Considering Policy Explanations for the Variation in Lithium Industry Development in the 'Lithium Triangle' Countries of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia." Politics & Policy 48(4): 727–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12365. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper locates trade union banners and those of other campaigns and left organisations as part of the ongoing work and labour of producing democratic political cultures. It argues that engaging with the ways in which they were used, shaped, produced and re‐worked can shed important light on often neglected spatial practices and forms of agency of democratic politics. We contend that engaging with the geographical imaginaries and practices shaped by trade union engagements with democracy offers important and original perspectives on different articulations of spatial relations, labour, and democratic politics. The paper engages with Clive Barnett's influential work on the geographies of democracy and outlines an alternative position based on engaging with the generative character of political activity. The empirical part of the paper offers three cuts through different articulations of labour and democratic politics. The paper engages with the Banners of Glasgow Shipwrights to explore aspects of trade union politics and struggles for democratic reform. We discuss the relations between the STUC Black Workers' Committee and generative spaces of organising and the relations between banners and the peace movement to engage forms of antagonist democratic cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that monuments to mestizaje (miscegenation) in Puerto Rico reaffirm the myth of a harmonious mixture between the White Spaniard, Black African, and Indigenous Taíno. This racial triad, originally conceived in the nineteenth century, was institutionalized in 1956 by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture to legitimize the reformulation of Puerto Rico's colonial status. It was meant to foster a consensus‐driven nation‐building project through a depoliticized harmonious mixture of races. I analyze ten monuments to mestizaje that privilege the white European root of Puerto Rican identity and demonstrate how their visual discourse sustains the narratives of racial democracy in Puerto Rico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political accountability requires that voters understand the distribution of policy outcome responsibility among their vote choice options. Research on partisan‐motivated reasoning suggests that voters do not meet this requirement. The problem is that voters condition their attributions of responsibility to the government on their party identification. Government identifiers credit the government for desirable outcomes and blame external forces such as the global economy for undesirable outcomes. This paper draws a more optimistic conclusion. It argues that focusing on the perceived responsibility of the government and external forces is not sufficient for understanding whether voters meet the responsibility attribution requirement. It is also necessary to compare the perceived responsibility of government parties to the perceived responsibility of opposition parties because those are the options that voters get to choose from. This party distribution of perceived responsibility is analyzed with original survey data from Denmark and the United Kingdom. The results demonstrate that while party identification does indeed condition voters' responsibility attributions, both government identifiers and independents attribute systematically more responsibility to the government than to the opposition regardless of the desirability of the outcome. This suggests that voters tend to meet the responsibility attribution requirement of accountability despite the presence of partisan‐motivated reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tolerance has long been identified as a crucial feature of liberal democracies. Although the limits of tolerance are debated, the extent to which citizens are open and willing to accommodate others who are different from them is often regarded as a sign of a healthy and well‐functioning liberal democracy. The goal of this paper is to empirically investigate the state of political tolerance in Europe today. The main questions we ask are: What explains the different levels of tolerance across individuals in various countries? Which groups in society are the most likely targets of intolerance? We understand political tolerance as the willingness to allow the free articulation of interests and ideas in the political system of groups one opposes. Previous research emphasizes education, civic activism and threat perceptions as important determinants of tolerance. We redirect the debate to a set of novel correlates of tolerance. We argue that conspiratorial thinking and cosmopolitanism are critical factors that explain levels of tolerance among Europeans. The analysis employs original survey data collected as part of a mass survey conducted in 2017 in 10 European Union member states: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Our descriptive analysis shows that far‐right groups (i.e., fascists and neo‐Nazis) and Muslims are the most disliked groups in Europe. When it comes to the level of tolerance towards these groups, we find that more than half of the respondents in each country are willing to deny their most disliked group parliamentary representation. Moreover, we find that even after controlling for traditional determinants of tolerance, conspiratorial thinking and cosmopolitanism emerge as the most important predictors of political tolerance. Our analysis suggests that the recent rapid spread of various conspiracy theories related to the COVID‐19 pandemic is likely to have far‐reaching implications for tolerance as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theory of the relationship between policy disasters and political institutions. Policy disasters, defined as avoidable, unintended extreme negative policy outcomes, are important political, and historical events above that receive relatively little attention from political scientists and scholars of public policy. Using the predictions of punctuated equilibrium theory, I argue that systems with higher error accumulation will experience more policy disasters. Systems with more veto players and weaker information flows will experience more policy disasters, but information flows will have a stronger impact than veto players. I test this theory using data on financial crises and natural and technological disasters across 70 countries over 60 years. I find strong evidence that systems with weaker information flows and more veto players tend to have greater policy disaster risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualizes intellectual dissent as a galvanizer of academic freedom in a post‐totalitarian academia that is moving toward democratization. Drawing on the case of Ukraine, the analytical narrative describes difficulties in overcoming legacies in universities emerging from repressive rule that discouraged creativity, initiative, and critical inquiry, and having to envisage a transition to democratic governance in the context of neoliberal geopolitics. The case analysis suggests that intellectual dissent is essential but limited in its ability to establish the praxis of academic freedom under increasing control by oligarchic governments and a self‐serving bureaucracy. By exploring interdependencies between intellectual dissent and academic freedom, this paper lays ground for an analytical framework that can be helpful in rethinking the prospects of universities at the crossroads of authoritarianism and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This helps to see why fully identifying the I demos i with the citizenry fails to yield a I demos i properly: in such a framework, there simply is no I demos i ; there is only a I polis i and a citizenry. It should be noted that, while acknowledging conceptualisations of the I polis i in which it cannot be easily dissociated from citizens or the I demos i , I use the word I polis i throughout this paper merely as a convenient terminological opposition to I demos i , indicating state institutions as opposed to the agents in whose collective name they supposedly operate. Due to the conflation of citizenry and I demos i , it has appeared unproblematic to prioritise the I polis i , since if the I demos i is taken to be identical with the citizenry it is taken to be an institution, in which case it is proper to the I polis i . As the concept of the I demos i is one of the primary concerns of this paper, a more precise definition of the I demos i will become clear below, but as a basic point of departure I take I demos i to be analogous to what Claude Lefort calls "indeterminable" (Lefort, 1986, pp. 257-258). To deny that any I demos i is a political artefact is to depoliticise the I demos i as such; in the final instance, to depoliticise the I demos i is to divest it of what renders it a I demos i . [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores a major road to substantive representation in democracies, by clarifying whether demands of rich and poor citizens are taken up in the electoral platforms of political parties. Doing so constitutes a substantial broadening and deepening of our understanding of substantive representation – broadening the countries, issue‐areas and years that form the empirical basis for judging whether democracies manifest unequal representation; and deepening the process of representation by clarifying a key pathway connecting societal demands to policy outcomes. The paper hypothesises that party systems in general will respond more strongly to wealthy than to poor segments of a polity. It also hypothesises that left parties will more faithfully represent poorer and less significantly represent richer citizens than do right parties. We find substantial support for these expectations in a new dataset that combines multi‐country, multi‐issue‐area, multi‐wave survey data with data on party platforms for 39 democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses how democracy can affect public finance and state capacity investment. We show that the effect of democracy on public policy can take two forms: direct and indirect. The direct effect transpires when increasing democracy leads to an increase in public expenditure which results in increased public goods provision and reduced political rent. The indirect effect emerges when increased democracy leads to a reduction in state capacity investment and, subsequently, to a reduction in public goods provision. Paradoxically, lower political rents deteriorate the incumbent's incentive to invest in state capacity, at the expense of public goods provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Sarah Stitzlein considers the consequences of honesty on our democracy, especially for citizens' ability to engage in civic inquiry together as they face shared problems. Honesty is a key component of a well‐functioning democracy; it develops trust and fosters the sorts of relationships among citizens that enable civic dialogue and reasoning. Post‐truth attitudes and truth decay pose serious obstacles to good civic reasoning as citizens struggle to draw clear distinctions between fact and opinion, weigh personal beliefs and emotions over facts, and increasingly distrust traditionally respected sources of information. Stitzlein employs a Deweyan pragmatist account of truth and a distinctly social account of democracy to build a case for foregrounding honesty in the development of citizens. She describes how schools can employ communities of inquiry to cultivate habits of honesty within citizenship education. She explains how a better democracy — one grounded in a wider understanding of social life and relationships — might head off the temptation to be dishonest for self‐serving reasons, focusing on how dishonesty jeopardizes our relationships to each other as citizens and our ability to engage in civic reasoning together to fulfill shared goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate who would vote 'none of the above' (NOTA) if this were available on the ballot paper using original data from eight European countries. In particular, we examine whether NOTA would be used by abstainers and voters to protest within the electoral process. We also test whether socioeconomic factors and specific and diffuse support for democracy and its institutions correlate with a NOTA vote. We find that having NOTA on the ballot would reduce invalid balloting more than abstention and much more than protest party voting. Our results also suggest that NOTA is related to socioeconomic status, political interest, political knowledge and distrust in political institutions and authorities, but not to broadly undemocratic attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the increasingly large amounts of abstention and invalid voting, as well as the growing distrust of political institutions, in democratic countries. They also hold lessons for electoral reformers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges some widespread theoretical assumptions and practices in the study of populism and proposes a new multidimensional approach to generate and analyse data on this latent construct. Rather than focusing on categorising subjects as populists or not, it recommends reaching a better understanding of what populism is, the salience and relative weight of its attributes and how they interact creating an inner populist logic. Despite the increasing media and academic attention, historical discrepancies in how to conceptualise and operationalise populism have hindered cumulative progress in the literature. Initially most efforts were devoted to the study of specific movements, without a clear comparative angle, and the concept of populism was often conflated with that of nationalism. When the literature started to pay more attention to the analysis of the attributes associated with populism serious disagreements emerged concerning its true essence. Populism has been conceptualised as an ideology, a cynical strategy, a performative style and a discursive logic of articulation. The disputes between these competing interpretations have arguably slowed down the generation of comparative data. Although this article is meant to be a critique of the current state of the field and a call to make it pivot into a slightly different direction, it does not adopt an iconoclast stance and largely tries to reconcile the different existing research traditions – ideational, discursive, performative and strategic. It shows that their efforts are to a great extent complementary but mostly operating on different rungs of the ladder of abstraction. This paper argues that shifting from minimal definitions into a multidimensional approach may stimulate the generation of comparative data on a wider range of attributes and facilitate the identification of degrees and varieties within populism. This paper develops a new analytical framework which deconstructs populism into five dimensions: (1) depiction of the polity, (2) morality, (3) construction of society, (4) sovereignty and (5) leadership. These dimensions, that synthesise the most influential conceptualisations of populism, are empirically and theoretically interconnected and encompass ideational, discursive and performative attributes suggested in the literature. These dimensions are in turn composed of lower order attributes forming a multilayered network structure. This multidimensional framework provides a heuristic template that can be adapted and operationalised in diverse ways depending on the hypotheses, type of data and subjects of the analysis. Some examples of how to turn these dimensions into variables to capture supply‐ and demand‐side populism are introduced. Future empirical research could help map and better understand the network of interactions and intersections among these dimensions and attributes. This could be the key to settle some of the current conceptual debates about populism and its varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers to them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This paper considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics' challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative's actions advance the aims of the representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic jurisdiction in Africa meant to re‐instil peace in the continent, unite her people and champion the philosophy of Ubuntu. It has endeavoured to eradicate the enduring legacies of colonial hegemony and assert a new identity distinguished by autonomous ideologies. Despite the dispensation of these efforts, African societies are still bedevilled by colonial fragments. This is evinced by the appalling racist undertones and xenophobic spells that are overbearing in Africa in the democratic wave. Today, the African continent is vexed by the increasing rate of xenophobic outbreaks that sometimes appear to be anchored in racist connotations. This, inter alia, menaces African humanism and social development in African societies. This qualitative paper has aimed to uproot racist precipitants in xenophobic attacks. It is theoretical in nature and evaluates the rapport between racism and xenophobia from an Afrocentric perspective. The study has found that the xenophobic sentiments in the present day are framed within the imaginings of race. It has illuminated racial identity as a catalyst for xenophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, freedom functions as a foundational value for his entire political philosophy. Parallel to this emphasis is his deep and abiding condemnation of "slavery", at least the slavery that he claims marked the social existence of his European contemporaries living under unrepresentative monarchical systems. However, the striking aspect of Rousseau's work is his virtually complete silence concerning the institution of chattel slavery of his day. Despite his ubiquitous condemnation of the "slavery" of his "civilized" contemporaries, Rousseau wrote next to nothing about the actual enslavement of millions of people who pervaded the social landscape of the European–African–American triangle in the 18th century. In this paper, I trace out the various passages in Rousseau that could be seen as touching on the subject of contemporary slavery practices and show how very scant they were. I also discuss his views on the relation between climate, character, and persons' fitness for democratic forms of government (and hence freedom). I combine these points to draw particular lessons about the dangers of neglect and exclusion inherent in Rousseau's views of democratic freedom, suggesting how similar dangers lurk for contemporary visions of democracy inspired by his views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top‐down "closed" spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) vice‐versa, the mechanisms through which bottom‐up, open spaces can be co‐opted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of 'governance‐driven democratization' describes top‐down and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracy‐driven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizens' demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they co‐exist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular political attitudes surveys have been conducted globally for several decades, but the Pacific region remains an exception. This paper presents the findings of the first Pacific Attitudes Survey (PAS), conducted in Samoa from December 2020‐January 2021. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of Samoans of voting‐age (n = 1319) the PAS gauges the attitudes of ordinary Samoans to their democracy, levels of popular trust in institutions, attitudes towards the role of government, and to women's participation in politics. Findings reveal high levels of support for democracy and trust in democratic institutions. At the same time, popular political attitudes highlight a distinct model of Samoan democracy, in which respect for modern democratic norms is tempered and entwined with deeper traditions of Samoan community and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article gives a historical‐philosophical overview of three generations of pragmatist thinking centered around the question of democracy. It serves as an introduction and contextualization to the papers that develop a third generation pragmatic point of view in the remainder of the special issue. The perspective is from one American‐trained philosopher of education who has studied and written widely in pragmatism and European social theory. The article has sections on three generations generally described and with primary influences of John Dewey, Richard Rorty, and Bruno Latour. In each generation, other important philosophic contributions discussed come from C. S. Peirce and William James, Hilary Putnam, Donna Haraway, and Isabelle Stengers as well as relevant commentators. The first two, Dewey and Rorty, contribute to a sub‐theme of democracy in their writings that the third, Latour, continues in politics in a section elaboration. The introduction sets forth a generational theme and an international setting for pragmatism. The conclusion summarizes the article's key ideas and points to a need in education for a democratic future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As political polarization increases across many of the world's established democracies, many citizens are unwilling to appreciate and consider the viewpoints of those who disagree with them. Previous research shows that this lack of reflection can undermine democratic accountability. The purpose of this paper is to study whether empathy for the other can motivate people to reason reflectively about politics. Extant studies have largely studied trait‐level differences in the ability and inclination of individuals to engage in reflection. Most of these studies focus on observational moderators, which makes it difficult to make strong claims about the effects of being in a reflective state on political decision making. We extend this research by using a survey experiment with a large and heterogeneous sample of UK citizens (N = 2014) to investigate whether a simple empathy intervention can induce people to consider opposing viewpoints and incorporate those views in their opinion about a pressing political issue. We find that actively imagining the feelings and thoughts of someone one disagrees with prompts more reflection in the way that people reason about political issues as well as elicits empathic feelings of concern towards those with opposing viewpoints. We further examine whether empathy facilitates openness to attitude change in the counter‐attitudinal direction and find that exposure to an opposing perspective (without its empathy component) per se is enough to prompt attitude change. Our study paints a more nuanced picture of the relationship between empathy, reflection and policy attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between democracy and space by investigating the spaces produced by the explosion of democratic desire during the 15M movement in Spain in 2011. It argues that participants produced a space that was more an agora than a parliament, more a plaza than a factory floor, and space that was more for use than for exchange. The paper argues that if the project for democracy is to thrive, it should be unceasingly attentive to the spaces that democratic desire produces, both in spectacular movements like the 15M and in the more quotidian practices of ordinary inhabitants all over the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary societies, there is a strong push toward seeing education as an instrument for the delivery of particular societal agendas. On such a view, the only questions that remain are how effective education is at delivering such agendas and how its effectiveness can be increased. While this might be a desirable way forward for those who believe that a consensus about the agenda for education can easily be achieved, it is at odds with the idea that a democratic society is characterized by a fundamental plurality of visions about what schools are supposed to be for. Yet the democratic critique of educational instrumentalism cannot be confined to giving each and every vision its own school, as this would simply multiply educational instrumentalism rather than oppose it. A true democratic response thus needs to take education's own interest seriously as well, which, as Gert Biesta argues in this paper, amounts to a defense of the school as institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: classical tolerance; democracy; identity politics; political freedom; postmodern tolerance EN classical tolerance democracy identity politics political freedom postmodern tolerance 237 241 5 06/24/22 20220601 NES 220601 INTRODUCTION In his paper "The meanings of tolerance", Maykel Verkuyten (2022) deals with the case of a student who posted comments on Facebook that expressed his disapproval of homosexuality and same sex marriage because it was considered a sin and abomination in his Christian belief. Classical tolerance, democracy, political freedom, postmodern tolerance, identity politics In his study Verkuyten distinguishes "classical tolerance" and a different, "modern" understanding of the term tolerance. CLASSICAL TOLERANCE Despite a long history of the term tolerance its traditional meaning can be summarized as follows: Classical tolerance is understood as enduring and putting up with issues one dislikes and even may disapprove of. [Extracted from the article]

Experts often play a fundamental role in decision‐making processes. They are the bearers of an epistemic authority, which is primarily grounded on what we may call scientific naturalism. The main tenets of this view can clash though with other values characterising our pluralist societies. This may lead to conflicts but also to a devaluation or to a rejection of the sort of knowledge and advise offered by experts. In this paper we propose a new accommodation between scientific naturalism and the values of our democratic societies. In Section 1, we present a case study highlighting the problematicity of experts' decisions based on mere epistemic soundness. In Section 2, we frame our analysis of expertise in the context of a post‐truth world. Section 3 looks at the relations between scientific naturalism and democracy, while Section 4 focuses on the potential clash between scientific naturalism and the normative character of other forms of knowledge. In Sections 5 and 6, we present practical instances of this clash (additional case studies), involving religious, bioethical, and cultural values. We show that in some cases these values ought to be granted full citizenship in a democratic state. This, (Section 7), leads us to a stalemate that seems to threaten the functioning of modern democracies. In Section 8, to overcome this stalemate, we propose to resort to a more inclusive form of naturalism, namely liberal naturalism. This form of naturalism cannot do without experts' scientific recommendations and yet does not end up excluding (a priori) alternatives forms of knowledge. We conclude, Section 9, by advocating a more liberal ecology of mechanisms for the regulation of decision‐making processes; one that also encompasses socially inclusive (not necessarily scientific) processes of deliberation and judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against premature claims about the declining political relevance of social class in post‐industrial democracies, recent research indicates that class continues to be a relevant determinant of political preferences. In post‐industrial societies 'old' class divides on economic issues coexist with 'new' class alignments on cultural topics. While there is cumulated evidence of social classes' distinct placement on these issues, this paper argues that the strength of class divides depends on the extent to which these issues are politicized by political parties. Studying preferences on economic and cultural issues (attitudes towards redistribution, immigration, gay rights and European integration), this study shows that class divides in preferences are context dependent. The multilevel analyses drawing on data from the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey for 27 European democracies demonstrate that classes' differences in preferences are accentuated on issues strongly contested and emphasized by parties, and mitigated on issues where party conflict is weaker. Adding to recent literature on parties and class conflict, this study identifies another stage at which parties can affect the strength of class voting. The varying strength of class divides across contexts also has implications for parties' ability to garner support beyond a single class. This becomes increasingly unlikely in contexts of high issue politicization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing health inequalities remains a challenge for policy makers across the world. Beginning from Lewin's famous dictum that "there is nothing as practical as a good theory", this paper begins from an appreciative discussion of 'fundamental cause theory', emphasizing the elegance of its theoretical encapsulation of the challenge, the relevance of its critical focus for action, and its potential to support the practical mobilisation of knowledge in generating change. Moreover, it is argued that recent developments in the theory, provide an opportunity for further theoretical development focused more clearly on the concept of power (Dickie et al. 2015). A critical focus on power as the essential element in maintaining, increasing or reducing social and economic inequalities – including health inequalities – can both enhance the coherence of the theory, and also enhance the capacity to challenge the roots of health inequalities at different levels and scales. This paper provides an initial contribution by proposing a framework to help to identify the most important sources, forms and positions of power, as well as the social spaces in which they operate. Subsequent work could usefully test, elaborate and adapt this framework, or indeed ultimately replace it with something better, to help focus actions to reduce inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By applying a stochastic production frontier approach, this paper investigates regional inefficiencies of job creation in Spain over the period 2006–2012. This paper represents a first attempt to test whether a more flexible labour market as designed by the 2010 reform reduces regional inefficiencies. Results suggest that the 2010 reform appears to have improved on average the efficiency of the Spanish labour market even if regional differences persisted over time. The paper also investigates the importance of local democracy for the labour market finding that local democracy positively influences regional efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the origins of what is seen as a lack of understanding about the seriousness of our current times. The author's view is that this failure is due to a lack of awareness that our human species is destructive, arrogant, self-centred and ignorant of the laws of nature and the wonderful complexity of the environment that it destroys. Possible new values that could support a new civilizational framework are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an overview of the barriers to social progress 80 years on from the original Beveridge report (Beveridge, 1942). It argues we can identify and conceptualise five alternative 'Giants', relating these to social theory and social debates in the 21st century, and considering the prospects for progress against these new challenges. After considering Beveridge's original Giants in their context, it considers large‐scale theories of social change after 1942 and reviews what other 'Giants' writers have suggested in calls for a 'new Beveridge' and proposes inequality, preventable mortality, job quality, fragmenting democracy and environmental degradation as the most significant challenges we face, linking each to one of Beveridge's original Giants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a comparative political perspective, island jurisdictions stand out as having exceptionally democratic regimes in comparison with mainland or continental polities. Irrespective of their geographical location, levels of economic development or constitutional status (sovereign or nonsovereign), with only a few exceptions, island jurisdictions around the world have democratic political institutions. While some scholars have explained this relationship on the basis of colonial history, international political dynamics or the geographical isolation and remoteness that stem from being an island, others have argued that the smallness of islands explains the correlation, meaning that size is actually the causal factor that explains the prevalence of democratic governance. In this paper, an original account of the relationship between islandness and democracy is provided, foregrounding the informal political dynamics that can be observed in island territories around the world. To do this, the specific nature, dynamics and varieties of democratic governance in island jurisdictions are examined. Most island nations have adopted the political‐institutional framework of former colonial powers or metropolitan states, and these have only rarely been modified to suit the (small) island context. Yet due to the greater social intimacy and interconnectedness of island societies, these formal institutional frameworks are likely to be complemented or overshadowed by a set of powerful informal political dynamics, which means that a large part of the political process is conducted outside of the official political channels. These informal politics have mixed effects on the quality of democratic governance, as face‐to‐face relations offer both opportunities and drawbacks for democratic transparency and accountability. The last analytical section of the paper examines the interaction between formal institutional structures and the prevalent informal political dynamics in island territories, and argues that this interplay perhaps provides the best explanation for the survival of democratic institutions in island territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WhatsApp and digital private spaces are transforming the quality of lived democracy in India today. Bringing together STS, geographies of democracy, digital and political anthropology, and feminist approaches to the home, this paper makes visible how the Silicon Valley imaginary of the "digital living room" is domesticated in India. Drawing on digital ethnographic research in urban north India we show how WhatsApp is being used by the Hindu right to digitise new party‐political intimacies. This has implications for how people at the margins of Hindu nationalist politics dwell in the "digital living room". Framed as a home like space, we problematise Facebook's "spatiotechnical" utopia by making visible how kinship and (domestic) politics are newly entangled in digital private spaces. Finally, we document how WhatsApp is deployed as a technology of discipline to determine modes of appropriate sociality and reconfigure spaces of digital‐physical inclusion/exclusion in the making of India's "ethnic democracy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Footnotes 1 Nixon propounded, as an "honorable end to the war", a policy of "Vietnamization" "in which the United States would slowly pull its ground forces out of Vietnam while escalating the air war and increasing its training of the South Vietnamese military" (Laderman, [23], p. 2). 2 Abramowitz's ([1]) public polling research points to the white racial resentment so key to Trump's support during the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, under the confounded notion that Trump could "bring back [ I sic i .] Tocqueville's categories in this regard anticipate the "Silent Majority" of Trump and Nixon. REPRESENTING THE VOX POPULI In his essay, "Populism and Constitutionalism", Jan-Werner Müller (2017) remarks: "It is not an accident that Richard Nixon's famous (or infamous) notion of a "silent majority" has had such a career among populists: if the majority were not silent, it would already have a government that truly represents the people" (p. 595). To bring this point into the context of this paper, the hubris and I failure i surrounding the storming of the Capitol in 2021 - the Trump-led effort to overturn the 2020 election results - as with Watergate in 1972, may be read ultimately as both Trump and Nixon's I misrecognition i of the separation of these two images of power. [Extracted from the article]

This paper assesses how economic freedom is affected by the ideological stance, being the first to analyse the role of dictatorial regimes and their ideological orientations. Using annual data for 145 countries over the period 2000‐2017 and a two‐step system GMM estimator, this study finds that democracies do promote more economic freedom than authoritarian regimes, but not in all circumstances The probability that economic liberalization is promoted is higher for right‐wing dictatorships than for other autocracies and comparable to other types of democratic ruling, with the exception of right‐wing democratic governments that strongly benefit liberalization. These right‐wing governments, alongside (the negative effect of) non‐right‐wing dictatorships, seem to be the main contributors to explaining why democracies in recent years are promoting more economic liberalization than autocracies. Additionally, our results suggest that democratic governments not ideologically identifiable seem to share a common dislike for policies that promote liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A close connection between public opinion and policy is considered a vital element of democracy. In representative systems, elections are assumed to play a role in realising such congruence. If those who participate in elections are not representative of the public at large, it follows that the reliance on elections as a mechanism of representation entails a risk of unequal representation. In this paper, we evaluate whether voters are better represented by means of an analysis of policy responsiveness to voters and citizens in democracies worldwide. We construct a uniquely comprehensive dataset that includes measures of citizens' and voters' ideological (left–right) positions, and data on welfare spending in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries since 1980. We find evidence of policy responsiveness to voters, but not to the public at large. Since additional tests suggest that the mechanism of electoral turnout does not cause this voter‐policy responsiveness, we outline alternate mechanisms to test in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper studies the direct and indirect impacts of political regimes on corruption. Whereas the interplay of government is fundamental to corrupt acts, the present research sheds new light by showing the direct and indirect influences of dimensions of government structure on corruption. Methods: We employ two different estimation techniques. First, we use OLS regressions, with year and regional dummies. Second, we employ mediation analysis to account for the intermediate role of government size in the relation between government structure and corruption in order to gauge the direct and indirect influences on corruption Results: Results show that government structure, across various dimensions of authoritarian and nonauthoritarian regimes, significantly impacted cross‐national corruption. In particular, a nation's stock of democracy and parliamentary systems lowered corruption, while executive tenure and dimensions of authoritarianism added to corruption. On the other hand, the size of the legislature did not matter when it came to corruption. However, the direct influences of these government structure variables are mitigated or reinforced when the intermediate role of government size is considered in a mediation analysis. Conclusions: The breakdown into the direct and indirect effects on corruption is a novel insight of this work, with useful policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments using data analytics will be increasingly drawn into creating social licence for these applications. The need will be greatest where two conditions are present. First, where data analytics are used to predict rather than describe or prescribe. Second, where such prediction is used by governments when exercising their coercive powers. Two examples of using predictive risk modelling are identifying children at risk of neglect and abuse; and assessing recidivism risk in the criminal justice system. Each has drawn criticism, precipitating discussion around the requirements for social licence. Much of this discussion focusses on transparency as both an intrinsic virtue and an instrumental virtue for achieving social licence. The paper contends that transparency is unachievable as an intrinsic virtue for such purposes and that its conceptions as an instrumental virtue fall short of that required for users and subjects as well as the public to have "sufficient to approve or disapprove of the algorithm's performance". The conclusion is that unconventional democratic forms, including deliberative and direct democracy, are likely to prove more successful than representative democracy in establishing that licence and thereby realising more fully the potential contribution of data analytics to better government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representative democracy gives voters the right to influence who governs but its influence on policy making is only indirect. Free and fair referendums give voters the right to decide a policy directly. Elected representatives usually oppose referendums as redundant at best and as undermining their authority at worst. Democratic theorists tend to take electing representatives as normal and as normatively superior. The nominal association of popular decision making and populism has strengthened this negative view. Public opinion surveys show substantial support for holding referendums on important issues. Two major theories offer contrasting explanations for popular support for referendums; they reflect populist values or a commitment to the civic value of participation. This innovative paper tests an integrated model of both theories by the empirical analysis of a 17‐country European survey. There is substantial support for all three civic hypotheses: referendum endorsement is positively influenced by attitudes towards participation, democratic ideals and whether elected representatives are perceived as responsive. By contrast, there is no support for populist hypotheses that the socioeconomically weak and excluded favour referendums and minimal support for the effect of extreme ideologies. The conclusion shows that most criticisms of referendums also apply to policy making by elected representatives. While referendums have limits on their use, there is a democratic argument for holding such ballots on major issues to see whether or not a majority of voters endorse the choice of their nominal representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]