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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]

The purpose of this paper is to support three claims. Firstly, that it is Buchanan's uncompromising commitment to a methodological and a normative individualism to which his lifework owes its coherence and internal consistency. Secondly, that a principal motivating force behind his life-long research efforts has been the aim of inquiring into how the citizen-members of a democratic polity may govern themselves in mutually beneficial ways. And, thirdly, that his contractarian constitutionalism provides a paradigmatic alternative to received outlooks of liberalism, welfare economics, and democratic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major criticisms of contemporary capitalist society which the bishops' pastoral letter raises is the increasing economic, political and social marginalization resulting from the concentration of wealth and power in the form of monopoly capital. The bishops condemn these contemporary inequalities as unjust, undemocratic and antithetical to the teachings of the Church and Catholic humanism. Given this criticism, we can better understand the bishops' policy prescriptions as intended to show how monopoly "capital can be reconciled with the common good", the problem as explicitly posed in section 281 of their pastoral. Hence, their proposal for economic democracy and economic planning can be seen as one possible solution to this general problem of monopoly concentration and marginalization. However, as I criticize in my paper, the bishops' policy prescriptions are undermined by contradictions in their position as well as questionable assumptions implicit to their model for economic democracy. On the one hand and as motivated by the bishops' desire to promote greater democracy and social justice for marginalized groups, the bishops' propose greater state intervention in the economy, particularly in areas concerning the planning and control over investment decisions. On the other hand and on behalf of the rights and liberties of private property owners, the bishops' want to preserve a measure of laissez-faire and private initiative in the market place. In short, the bishops' seem undecided about which of their social sentiments should have priority - their egalitarian or libertarian sentiments. Apparently, and as I demonstrate in my paper, the bishops fear more the imagined threats of social democracy to the status quo of private property than the actual marginalizing effects of private monopoly capital. In the latter part of my paper, my class analysis of liberal democracy and the antagonistic interests of capital and labor is intended to challenge... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Vincent Ostrom challenged epistemic choices at the foundation of modern political science and proposed an alternative conceptualization of democracy based on a theory of federalism he derived from The Federalist and Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This essay examines Vincent Ostrom's critique of contemporary mainstream political theorizing, relates his original theoretical work to the empirical research Elinor Ostrom, other colleagues, and he conducted, advised, or sponsored at The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Indiana University, and concludes that 'Ostrom's democratic alternative' constitutes an alternative scientific paradigm as defined by Thomas Kuhn. The paper concludes with a comment on the continuing relevance of Ostrom's critique in the post-9/11 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I evaluate two competing perspectives regarding what underlies the public's support for democracy promotion-a democratic values-based perspective positing that the public's support for democracy promotion is based on a principled desire to spread American values, beliefs, and ideologies to other countries, and a national interests-based perspective claiming that it is based on a rational desire of Americans to advance the US' political and economic interests abroad. Using a survey experiment, I find that, in general, Americans are not driven by either democratic values or national interests to support democracy promotion even though they believe that democracy promotion is in the interests of both the recipient country and the United States. Only a subset of the population is motivated to support democracy promotion for the sake of democratic values. This subset of the population is driven by cosmopolitanism-that is, a sense of concern for the welfare of those living in other countries and a sense of moral responsibility to promote democracy abroad derived from the US' position as a world leader, not national pride. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address these two questions: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of multinational enterprises emphasize that foreign direct investment (FDI) is undertaken in different industries for different reasons, yet studies of the effects of democracy on FDI most commonly use aggregate-level FDI data. This paper evaluates US FDI outflows to 15 industries (eight manufacturing, seven nonmanufacturing) in 54 countries in a linear dynamic panel-data gravity FDI model using a 'system' generalized method of moments estimator and three widely used democracy indicators. At the aggregate-level, we estimate a positive effect of democracy on FDI, consistent with most prior studies. At the industry level, we estimate larger positive effects of democracy on FDI for service than manufacturing industries, particularly for finance and insurance and information, and negative effects for mining and oil and gas extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the leaders of the Genetics Society of America (GSA) struggled to find an appropriate group response to Trofim Lysenko's scientific claims and the Soviet treatment of geneticists. Although some of the leaders of the GSA favored a swift, critical response, procedural and ideological obstacles prevented them from following this path. Concerned about establishing scientific orthodoxy on one hand and politicizing the content of their science on the other, these American geneticists drew on democratic language and concepts as they engaged in this political issue. The relatively weak statements that did emerge from the GSA attracted little attention in the scientific or popular press. The intensely politicized atmosphere of American science complicated the GSA's task, as domestic concerns about protecting democracy were beginning to constrain academic freedom. In the context of American Cold War culture, Lysenko became just one example of the dangers the Cold War world presented to scientific freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, a variety of groups have begun to argue that the US and European patent systems do not adequately represent the public interest in their decision making and that they need to undergo fundamental changes to their structure and orientation. These challengers have adopted similar strategies-in terms of the venues chosen and the arguments, evidence, and rhetoric used-in each context. However, they have experienced more success in Europe than in the United States. This paper begins to explain this difference by arguing that the US and European patent policy domains have different 'expertise barriers'-formal and informal rules that make it difficult for those without the knowledge that is recognized as relevant and legitimate in that domain to engage as equals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of public opinion polls in electoral democracy is undeniable because, for good or for bad, they affect, in part, the kinds of laws and policies elected officials enact. But the voices measured in polls are not perfectly representative of their populations of interest. More precisely, polls generally sing with a more “knowledgeable” accent than those they represent because of the greater tendency of the less knowledgeable to remain silent. This distortion, however, can be palliated by providing conditions more propitious to attitude development. By relying on survey-experiments conducted in Brazil and in the U.S., I present evidence that inducing people to think more carefully before answering attitude questions reduces substantially the likelihood of the less knowledgeable, which compose most of the Brazilian and American populations, to express a nonopinion response. Thus providing people with greater opportunity to think about politics—something most of them do not do very frequently—makes for more representative measures of public opinion. But the analyses also suggest that increased thought induces greater uncertainty or ambivalence among the most knowledgeable. As a whole, this paper improves our understanding on how people come to develop political attitudes and on the conditions that lead to greater attitude uncertainty or ambivalence. It also carries important lessons and implications for survey design more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of risk assessment of biotechnologies, such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has normative dimensions. However, the US’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems committed to the idea that such evaluations are objective. This essay makes the case that the agency’s regulatory approach should be changed such that the public is involved in deciding any ethical or social questions that might arise during risk assessment of GMOs. It is argued that, in the US, neither aggregative nor deliberative (representative) democracy ought to be used to make such determinations. Instead, participatory (deliberative) democracy should be the means by which members of the polity decide which normative concerns ought to underlie FDA’s assessment of GMOs. This paper uses a hypothetical case involving a new GM seed to make that argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gordon Tullock’s The Politics of Bureaucracy must be considered one of the most important works on bureaucracy ever written. In this paper, I argue that Tullock’s analysis of bureaucracy is as relevant as ever. To support this claim, I focus on U.S.-led reconstruction efforts which attempt to export liberal democracy via military occupation. Bureaucratic organizations play a key role in these reconstruction efforts and as such, Tullock’s analysis is directly relevant. It is argued that Tullock’s study clarifies not just the limits of bureaucratic activity, but also the importance of spontaneous orders for coordinating activities outside those limits and generating the very institutional context in which liberal democracy can evolve and sustain. The main conclusion is that the nature of public bureaucracy constrains the ability of the United States to exogenously impose liberal democratic institutions in foreign countries for the very reasons Tullock emphasized long ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on a paper by John A. Berteaux which focused on the limitations of liberal democratic ideals in relation to overcoming global inequality and injustice. The central argument of Berteaux is that U.S. policymakers do not possess the moral authority to impose liberal democratic ideals on the rest of the world, particularly on underdeveloped countries. He relied on contemporary critical theorists like Catherine Mackinnon, Gregory Mantsios and George Lipsitz to establish his argument.

This paper provides an account of reparations in general and then presents briefly one explanation of why many present day African Americans believe they are entitled to reparations from the U.S. Government. This explanation should not be seen as a final justification, but only as an indication why the demand for reparations for African Americans might be seen a plausible. Next, if it is reasonable to assume that reparations to African Americans are plausible, I then go on to explain why reparations might be necessary to fill the breech that is perceived to exist between many African Americans and their government. This explanation will involve an examination of the relationship between three concepts: forgiveness, reconciliation, and reparations. Then I explore why an apology or reparations for slavery and Jim Crow might be necessary for reconciliation between many African Americans and their government. Finally, I examine the contention that the legislative process can be used to obtain an apology or reparations from the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the grantmaking to South African civil society of six major U.S. foundations between 1988 and 1996. It answers four related questions: (1) How did these foundations understand civil society, and did they think there was a link between it and democracy? (2) How significant was their support for civil society from 1988 to 1996? (3) How did South Africa's democratization affect their grantmaking patterns? (4) Did the foundations favor professionalized NGOs over grassroots and decentralized organizations, and if so, was this the right approach? The empirical analysis of the South African case contributes to the general debate about the link between civil society and democracy, and the role of funders in supporting both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay develops a new theoretical and empirical understanding of the contemporary crisis of American democracy. Between November 3, 2020, and January 7, 2021, President Donald Trump battled to overturn the results of the American presidential election, launching myriad lawsuits and pressuring hundreds of electoral officials. Confronting this antidemocratic assault was a resilient civil sphere that sustained "office," an institution that, in a democratic society, inspires faith in the Constitution and loyalty to "we the people." After investigating how this civil institution empowered electoral and legal officials to fight off Trumpian pressures, I focus on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and US Vice President Mike Pence, examining how they emerged as widely admired icons of civil courage. After Trump's defeat, the televised hearings of the January 6th Commission created a "civic ritual" in the midst of which Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney became another icon, symbolizing the renewal of a "civil conservatism." A new, if still precarious, vital center emerged, allowing Democratic prosecutors finally to launch criminal proceedings against Trump. Yet, the Republican Party remains unreconstructed and, for this reason, the future of American democracy is still in doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a modified and enlarged version of a paper that was originally presented at the Third U.S.-Soviet Workshop on Interdependence Between Nations held at Berkeley, California, in January 1990. The author decided to present this article in the form of a series of theses despite the criticism of this method by a number of commentators and reviewers. The author recognizes that this is a rather unusual practice, but it is also unusual for a Soviet social scientist to have the opportunity to present his ideas directly to U.S. readers. The author has chosen to utilize this method because it enables him to explicate both his general approach to the problem and to offer particular observations and conclusions regarding the prospects for stable democracy in conflict-ridden multi-ethnic societies. To achieve this ends, the decision to concentrate on a few of the more crucial or controversial issues and to present only a highly condensed discussion may be justified. The point of departure for this article is the assumption that within multi-ethnic nations, individual ethnic communities will have a high, though by no means unqualified, potential for political mobilization. Once this potential is actualized, ethnoregional subpolitics and endemic tensions are likely to emerge along with their capacity to undermine the stability of the entire multi-ethnic political systems.

The article focuses on emerging nations and the ideologies of American social scientists. Confronting the rapidly expanding literature on political and social change in emerging nations, one finds it difficult not to ask the old question, never satisfactorily resolved, of the value implications of social science. The purpose of the author in this paper is to do just that by inquiring about some of the assumptions of American social scientists who have been studying political and social modernization in the world's new states and older poorer nations. These assumptions, though not usually stated as such are ideological in their implications in the sense that they involve normative views of the social order. Many discussions of the politics of emerging nations contain a redefinition of political democracy so as to include political systems within the term that by customary standards would be regarded as authoritarian regimes. Given the cultural heterogeneity and economic backwardness of the new states, non-democratic political systems are in some sense an inevitable outcome. Another characteristic is the denigration of the motives behind the nationalist or revolutionary movements occurring in the underdeveloped world. To the disadvantage of the emerging nations, invidious comparisons are drawn between their current strivings and the earlier ideologies of the West.

This paper's central concern is with signs of fascism in recent political developments in a number of European countries and the United States. It takes the reader back to earlier periods in European and American history when this same anguished question was raised. Thus a longer intellectual history of concerns about the viability of democratic systems is drawn to guide us in our current political evaluations. [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]

This article comments on the paper The Eclipse of the Democratic Party, by Walter Dean Burnham. Through most of his discussion and in his plaintive conclusion, Burnham is dismayed at the failure of the society to produce a workable system of party government. He has given up on the Democratic party and has lost faith in its ability to perform as a surrogate for social democracy. Without arguing the case for or against the national intransigencies that distinguish the country from other advanced industrial, capitalistic societies, a case can be made for staying the course where the party system is concerned.

For decades, Republicans and American conservatives have cultivated and employed public distrust in government to garner strategic benefits. But officeholders have typically behaved with restraint in running for reelection, limiting their pursuit of electoral self-interest at the expense of the political system they are sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend." President Trump has shown little interest in such restraint, and his attacks on the electoral process could produce grave social and political consequences in the aftermath of the 2020 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship in the U.S. provides mounting evidence of a linkage between economic inequality and inequality in representation and policymaking. In response, this article addresses a research question striking at the very heart of the resilience of the democratic capitalist design: Do voters punish elected officials for inequality? We advance the argument that voter punishment of incumbents for inequality will occur when inequality is locally salient and for officeholders that support inequality-enhancing legislation. Relying upon secondary analysis of large-N national survey data, we find that voters residing in high inequality contexts voted against incumbents who supported regressive tax policies and opposed minimum wage increases. Interestingly, for inequality-attenuating incumbents, we find increased support among voters in high inequality contexts. Importantly, robustness checks reveal that observed punishment effects hold for Democratic and Republican incumbents. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for American democracy in an era of rising inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recalling the landmark US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the advancement of educational equality is often associated with the reduction of stigmatizing differences in status or “sense of inferiority” engendered by separately and differentially educated citizens. This essay takes up the obverse concern, the sense of superiority sustained by educational inequality, with particular focus on the inequality signaled by higher education status (HES). I contend that the presence of aggrandized HES in a democratic society provides reasons to object to educational inequality for which institutions of higher education ought to be held responsible. Aggrandized HES not only demands a questionable deference from citizens in a democratic society; it also weakens HES’s signaling of epistemic authority and equality of educational opportunity, which harms the public’s motivation to learn by distorting beliefs about education. To address this problem, I argue that the best policy solution for curbing aggrandized uses of HES is to transform the positional aspect of higher education using an admissions policy originally suggested by Elizabeth Anderson, which I term the elite culture strategy. Beyond admissions policies, this essay addresses the larger concern of educating citizens to perceive and assess educational status according to democratic norms and not solely in terms of self-interested gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutual distrust between experts and ordinary citizens—manifest in the wake of the Brexit referendum, the rise of the Tea Party and the election of Donald Trump—is not new. But it takes on particular urgency in an age when ill-informed “populist” policies on issues such as climate change may cause irreparable damage. This article examines the viability of Gilley’s (Policy Sci 50:9–22, 2017) attempt to resolve the conflict between “technocracy” and democracy. Gilley’s solution relies on the objective qualities of a policy to assign it to its appropriate “sphere”: Highly technical problems are best addressed by experts, while those marked by technical uncertainty can be handled by democracy. This article argues that such a solution will not be stable under current political conditions. We must recognize that various forms of corruption of expertise have contributed to today’s populist reaction against experts. The challenge of reforming expertise and mitigating mistrust of experts is a “divergent” problem, which requires ongoing balancing, and does not admit of a once-and-for-all solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have estimated the effect of circumstances on income acquisition. Perhaps surprisingly, the fraction of inequality attributable to circumstances is usually quite small-in the advanced democracies, approximately 20%. One reason for this is the lack of data on circumstance variables in empirical research. Here, we argue that all behaviors and accomplishments of children should be considered the consequence of circumstances: that is, an individual should not be considered to be responsible for her choices before an age of consent is reached. Using two data sets that contain data on childhood accomplishments, other environmental circumstances and the income as an adult, we calculate that the fraction of income inequality due to circumstances in the US rises from 27 to 43% when accounting for childhood circumstances. In the UK it rises from 18 to 27%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We outline a new voting procedure for representative democracies. This procedure should be used for important decisions only and consists of two voting rounds: a randomly-selected subset of the citizens is awarded a one-time voting right. The parliament also votes, and the two decisions are weighted according to a pre-defined key. The final decision is implemented. As this procedure gives the society-represented by the randomly-chosen subset-a better say for important decisions, the citizens might be more willing to accept the consequences of these decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the relationship between Philipp Frank and James Bryant Conant in light of two issues that engaged leading American intellectuals in the mid-twentieth century: the place of metaphysics in higher education and the responsibilities of intellectuals as educators to defend democracy against the rise of totalitarianism. It suggests that Frank's relationship to pragmatism was nourished by his professional and intellectual relationships to Conant and that each of their contributions to our understanding of science is inseparable from their efforts to engage their fellow intellectuals as well as the public about these pressing issues of their day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An enduring and increasingly acute concern-in an age of polarized parties-is that people's partisan attachments distort preference formation at the expense of relevant information. For example, research suggests that a Democrat may support a policy proposed by Democrats, but oppose the same policy if proposed by Republicans. However, a related body of literature suggests that how people respond to information and form preferences is distorted by their prior issue attitudes. In neither instance is information even-handedly evaluated, rather, it is interpreted in light of partisanship or existing issue opinions. Both effects are well documented in isolation, but in most political scenarios individuals consider both partisanship and prior opinions-yet, these dynamics may or may not pull toward the same preference. Using nationally representative experiments focused on tax and education policies, I introduce and test a theory that isolates when: partisanship dominates preference formation, partisanship and issue opinions reinforce or offset each other, and issue attitudes trump partisanship. The findings make clear that the public does not blindly follow party elites. Depending on elite positions, the level of partisan polarization, and personal importance of issues, the public can be attentive to information and shirk the influence of party elites. The results have broad implications for political parties and citizen competence in contemporary democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I consider the welfare implications of polarization in the preferences of political candidates, for different distributions of voter preferences, in a model of repeated elections. Candidates care about policy and also have an opportunity to engage in rent-seeking when in office. When candidates' preferences are polarized they choose non-converging policies if elected. This creates policy costs from not securing re-election, decreasing equilibrium rent-seeking, and, for appropriate parameters, increasing voter welfare. I show that increasing polarization among voters increases the range of parameters for which polarization in candidate preferences is socially optimal if only if utility functions are not too concave. Moreover, with multiple dimensions of policy disagreement, it is optimal to have greater polarization of candidate preferences in dimensions in which voters are more polarized if and only if utility functions are not too concave. I discuss the implications of these results for electoral competition in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainline religious institutions foster volunteering to serve the common good, and thereby build up their own members' happiness. Among mainline denominations, Presbyterians stand out for their high levels of volunteering, optimism, generalized trust, and happiness, as shown by new data from the Presbyterian Panel. This is tied not only to their general status as a core mainline denomination, but specifically to the Calvinist doctrines of providence and stewardship. Though declining in numbers, Presbyterians still make an outsized contribution to the Tocquevillian voluntary associations that build American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing ethnic and economic diversity exacerbates a longstanding tendency for members of a modern, liberal democracy to disassociate from each other. On the other hand, a wide range of organizations and communities actively bring together members across societal cleavages. The dynamic of inclusion is exemplified among communities that expect a high degree of obedience to a set of beliefs and practices, but allow such authority to be limited and contested by different persons. Inclusion is also more likely among new or outsider organizations less associated with societal divides. To the extent that authoritative communities nurture diverse social networks, they contribute to bridging social capital and inclusive political attitudes. The essay draws on studies of various organizations and polities that articulate shared, moral goods (e.g., army, churches, martial arts schools, rural towns). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several authors have examined the optimal k-majority rule using a variety of criteria. We formalize and extend the original argument laid out by Buchanan and Tullock (The calculus of consent: logical foundations of constitutional democracy, ) using a decision theoretic analysis from the perspective of an individual voter. Unlike previous formalizations, voters in our study are members of one or more groups. This allows us to examine cases wherein different voters have starkly different interests. Furthermore, voters in our study can err in their judgments of proposals allowing us to model potential irrationalities in the choice of an optimal k-majority rule. We consider both up or down votes on a single proposal as well as votes over a series of proposals. We find that the optimal k-majority rule depends on a number of parameters, most notably the number of rounds needed to create a proposal that will pass. Group membership has almost no affect. Furthermore, if two groups are at odds, then the external cost function can actually rise over some range of $$k$$ ; if voters err systematically in their judgment, more inclusive k-majority rules, such as unanimity rule, can fail to pass Pareto preferred proposals. Our results should help advance a classic work in Public Choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, the states have adopted a suite of reforms to their education systems in an effort to improve school performance. While scholars have speculated about the political consequences of these policies, to date there has been no empirical research investigating how these reforms affect the practice of American democracy. Combining data from an original survey of public school parents with information on state education standards, testing, and accountability policies, I examine how design features of these policies influence parents' attitudes about government, participation in politics, and involvement in their children's education. My research shows that parents residing in states with more developed assessment systems express more negative attitudes about government and education, and are less likely to become engaged in some forms of involvement in their children's education, than are parents who live in states with less developed assessment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property-owning democracies combine the regulative and redistributive functions of the welfare state with the governmental aim of ensuring that wealth and capital are widely dispersed. John Rawls, political philosophy's most famous property-owning democrat, argued that property-owning democracy was one of two regime types that best realized his two principles of justice, though he was notoriously vague about how a property-owning democracy's institutions are meant to realize his principles. To compensate for this deficiency, a number of Rawlsian political philosophers have tried to add institutional and policy content to the idea. While their efforts have advanced the discussion, few have criticized the soundness of these attempts. This article attempts to fill the void. I claim that, in comparison to welfare-state capitalism, property-owning democracy is both prohibitively impractical and unjust on Rawlsian grounds. I first argue that property-owning democracy is economically ineffective. Even granting the assumptions of Rawlsian ideal theory, property-owning democracies generate bad incentives and face severe information problems in comparison to more market-friendly welfare states. Further, in nonideal theory the motivations of political officials and citizens will likely be corrupted by the temptation to abuse the awesome state power at their disposal. Second, I argue that property-owning democracy is unjust relative to welfare-state capitalism. The three principles used to defend property-owning democracy-the difference principle, the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the 'political liberty' proviso-do not vindicate property-owning democracy and may even prohibit it. Welfare-state capitalism does much better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no simple formula for religious peace in the United States, such as 'separation of church andstate.' Instead, the US Constitution establishes two opposing principles -- religious freedom and civicinclusion -- that must be continually rebalanced. The legal result is a 'serpentine wall' between church andstate that creates zones of cooperation as well as separation. Moreover, the relatively peaceful coexistence ofdiverse religious communities within the United States is due, not simply to the principles of the FirstAmendment, but also to the de-spatialized and de-ritualized character of American religion, and to the absence of explicitly confessional parties in the American polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media websites are rapidly changing the way that Americans live and communicate with one another. Social media sites encourage individuals to constantly share information about one's self (and constantly seek information about others) that would have been private in the past. This experience can alter how an individual views the world in ways that political scientists have not been able to fully capture. In a cross-sectional survey of the American public I find a strong correlation between the use of Facebook and personal blogs and support for civil liberties. Individuals who spend more time self-publicizing on the Internet seem to value freedom of expression more, but also value the right to privacy less than individuals who use social media less often. This pattern suggests that technology may be altering American attitudes on basic democratic values and highlights the need for dynamic research designs that account for the causal effect Internet use may have on individual political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious re-examination of participatory traditions of democracy is long overdue. Iconically central to such traditions of democratic education is the practice of whole School Meetings. More usually associated with radical work within the private sector, School Meetings are here explored in detail through two examples from publicly funded education, (1) Epping House School, a mixed residential primary/elementary school for students with severe emotional, social and behavioural difficulties and (2) secondary/high schools within the Just Community School movement in the USA. In addition to providing richly textured accounts of the multiple realities and challenges of pioneering overtly democratic practices such as School Meetings within the publicly funded sector of education substantial attention is paid to analytic engagement with the kind of organisational structures, practices and cultures that seem to play an important role in their successful operation and development. The different phenomenological and theoretical strands weaving their way through the texture of Meeting practices also raise a number of key issues within the fields of social and political philosophy, in particular, whether School Meetings are best understood as predominantly political or communal phenomena. In gesturing towards the philosophical groundwork of a satisfactory answer I argue for the importance of the undeservedly neglected notion of democratic fellowship within the lexicon of democratic polity and aspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law and development has a very long history. The export of legal reforms based on Western legal models to enable trade and commerce thrived in the colonial period. During the 1960s and 1970s the USA led a then ‘new’ law and development movement exporting American law, ostensibly to foster liberalism and democratic institutions, and forestall the spread of communism. Although the Cold War was essentially a contest between two economic systems and this first moment in law and development was highly ideological, it was arguably not immediately ‘concerned with any specifically economic functions of law. It reflected a broader, more socially than economically inflected, conception of the importance of law in modernization processes.’ After its robust critique, as a failed political experiment, and after the end of the Cold War, law and development was reclaimed and openly acknowledged as a strategy critical to the development of markets. By the 1990s law and development was ‘explicitly’ linked to market-led development, and later social ambitions were introduced. Concurrently, many donors adopted the rule of law as the focus of their projects, aiming to see legal systems reformed to include independent courts capable of protecting businesses and citizens from discretionary use of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a normative theory of the number of representatives based on a model of a representative democracy. We derive a formula giving the number of representatives as proportional to the square root of total population. Simple tests of the formula on a sample of a 100 countries yield good results. We then discuss the appropriateness of the number of representatives in some countries. It seems that the United States has too few representatives, while France and Italy have too many. The excess number of representatives matters: it is positively correlated with indicators of red tape and barriers to entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay asks if there is a role for an active public in ratcheting down the harsh politics of crime control in the United States and the United Kingdom that has led to increased use of the criminal law and greater severity in punishment. It considers two opposing answers offered by political and legal theorists and then begins to develop a participatory democratic framework for institutional reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses a key question emerging from this project based at the University of Minnesota: the fundamental capacity of government to engage in 'dynamic oversight' of emergent technologies. This conception of oversight requires additional or new types of capacity for government agencies that must arbitrate conflicts and endow any outcomes with necessary democratic legitimacy. Rethinking oversight thus also requires consideration of the fundamental design and organizational capacity of the regulatory regime in the democratic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic progress in the United States has been attributed to the successful combination of two social structures - capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system. At the heart of this interaction is a particular work ethic in which hard work is considered the path to both immediate and future rewards. This article examines the evolution of work ethic in the United States, as well as the returns experienced through various adaptations in the country's history. From this grounding, the information is structured into a proposal that key messages contained in the current, accepted work ethic are subject to distortions that may contribute to unethical decision making. These distortions result from two potentials: (1) efforts to reconcile the work ethic with contradictory messages and (2) exaggerations of the work ethic that become dysfunctional. The intent is to provide a framework that may explain to organizational leaders how people with the same basic work ethic can behave differently in terms of ethical work. Along with this understanding comes the potential to offset possible distortions and to encourage more ethical behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levels of rising political distrust in the USA and parts of Europe attracted political scientists’ attention in the 1990s, and urged them to look at possible consequences of this phenomenon for the functioning of democracies and social life. Approximately during the same period, from a sociological viewpoint, social capital theorists started studying the effects of declining social capital on political and economic life. In this article, we looked at the relationship between political distrust and social capital from an interdisciplinary perspective. We studied the relationship in six European countries from three regions (North-West, South and East), and the USA, and we were interested in the question of whether this relationship varies over the regions, or whether it is approximately the same everywhere. We used ISPP data from the 2004 wave, which included a range of social capital indicators and political distrust items. Social capital was subdivided into four dimensions, namely, networks (membership of organizations), interpersonal or social trust, social norms (citizenship norms), and linking social capital (political activities). First we studied the effect of political distrust on these four dimensions of social capital, while controlling for other variables such as political efficacy, political interest and a set of socio-structural background variables. One of our main findings was that the only significant effect of political distrust we found throughout all countries was a negative effect on one dimension of social capital, namely, interpersonal trust: the more people distrust politicians and people in government, the less they trust other people in general, even when controlled for all other variables. The reverse relationship led us to the same conclusion: the more people tend to trust people in general, the less they distrust politics, a result we found in all countries. This finding refutes the claim that there is no or either only a very weak relationship between political and social trust, as some have strongly argued before. Other important political attitudes connected to social capital were political interest and political efficacy, and for political distrust it was external efficacy. Significant socio-economic factors were religiousness and educational level for membership of voluntary organizations, educational level for interpersonal trust, religiousness for citizenship norms, and educational level and age for political activities. The reciprocal relationship was strongest in the USA and North-Western Europe, as were the explained variances of our (more extensive) regression models. In Southern and Eastern Europe other factors appear to be at work which influence both social capital and political distrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No one would deny that sustainability is necessary for individual, business, and national survival. How this goal is to be accomplished is a matter of great debate. In this article I will show that the United States and other developed countries have a duty to create sustainable cities, even if that is against a notion of private property rights considered as an absolute. Through eminent domain and regulation, developed countries can fulfill their obligations to current and future generations. To do so, the governments must reject perfectly competitive free market capitalism and the absolute right to private property, and more fully adopt social welfare capitalism as their economic system. The result will be a sustainable society that balances democracy, individual rights and individual flourishing with the community’s flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A small group of citizens wields significant influence in the corporate, political, and military realms of American society. This group is known in the literature as the “elite.” Looking at the disparity between the elite and the masses of society in terms of education, wealth, and political power, one might surmise a conspiracy against fundamental democratic principles of equality, justice, and economic fair play. This article addresses non-conspiratorial cultural-contextual factors of history, social structure, media, psychology, education, and the marketplace contributing to the elite’s existence. It is concluded that non-conspiratorial factors play a primary role in their rise to global influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on judicial review as an expression of constitutional patriotism. It is well-known that the term constitutional democracy contains an internal tension. Democracy refers to self-rule, while constitutionalism imposes limits on the choices self-governing people can make. There can be an institution other than the policy-making institution that imposes limits on what policy-makers can do. Within this category, one can distinguish between strong-form and weak-form institutions. The model for a strong-form institution is the system of judicial supremacy found in the United States. A model for weak-form institutions is the Canadian system of judicial review. This system nominally allows a legislature to respond to judicial decisions enforcing a constitutional constraint by re-enacting the challenged statute. The U.S. system of judicial review has achieved a good reputation over the past several decades. The institutional design of strong-form systems may make dialogue depend on personal decisions by individual judges regarding their understanding of their role.

As the most demographically complex nation in the world, the United States faces ever more formidable challenges to fulfill its commitment to the democratic values of equity and inclusion as the foreign-born share of the population increases. Immigration, the major source of the contemporary diversification of the population, provides several lessons about how to prepare for that future within a framework of social justice and how to realign recent demographic trends with cherished democratic principles. A review of historical and contemporary controversies about the representation of the foreign-born and alien suffrage both illustrates the reemergence of ascriptive civic hierarchies and highlights some potentially deleterious social and civic consequences of recent demographic trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate about multicultural education in the USA has been marked by anxieties about the stability of a nation that is both increasingly culturally diverse and increasingly resistant to coercive assimilative practices. A politically and morally persuasive multiculturalism must seek to dispel rather than evade these anxieties. One educational venue in which they must be addressed is history teaching. The possibility of cultivating democratic patriotism in the teaching of a genuinely multicultural American history is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]