The road to democracy: The development of constitutionalism in Serbia 1869-1903

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bataković Dušan T.

2007-01-01

Full Text Available After the swiftly abolished liberal Constitution of 1835 and the imposed 'Turkish' one of 1838 (imposed by the Russians and Ottomans, guarantors of Serbia's autonomy granted in 1830, to limit the princely power, the development of constitutionalism in modern Serbia went through several phases. As elsewhere in the Balkans, constitutions usually resulted from a compromise between the ruler and the elites rather than from the will of the people. The 1868 Constitution drew to an extent upon the early nineteenth-century German constitutional monarchies, but, under pressure from the politically mobilized population, the 1888 Constitution, proposed by the Radical Party in response to the egalitarian aspirations of the nation's agrarian majority, adopted a French constitutional model - with a unicameral system and frequent coalition governments. Shaped on the model of the Belgian Constitution of 1831, which in its turn was a modified version of the French Charte of 1830, it restored a French influence, expressed for the first time in the 1835 Constitution. The 1888 Constitution was passed by the Grand National Assembly with its five-sixth majority of Radicals, representatives of the agrarian majority. It was soon annulled by the coup d'état of 1894 and the Court-imposed Constitution of 1869 was reinstituted. The Constitution of 1901 was an attempt to introduce a bicameral system as a means of upholding the influential role of the ruler, while limiting that of the Radical Party, which had enjoyed an ample electoral support since the 1888 Constitution. After the assassination in 1903 of the last Obrenović ruler king Alexander, and his wife, queen Draga, the liberal Constitution of 1888 with minor modifications was reinstituted. Under this Constitution - which is commonly known as the 1903 Constitution and which, during the democratic reign of king Peter I Karđorđević, was no longer challenged - Serbian democracy remained fragile, because there was no

Secure Multiparty Quantum Computation for Summation and Multiplication.

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Run-hua; Mu, Yi; Zhong, Hong; Cui, Jie; Zhang, Shun

2016-01-21

As a fundamental primitive, Secure Multiparty Summation and Multiplication can be used to build complex secure protocols for other multiparty computations, specially, numerical computations. However, there is still lack of systematical and efficient quantum methods to compute Secure Multiparty Summation and Multiplication. In this paper, we present a novel and efficient quantum approach to securely compute the summation and multiplication of multiparty private inputs, respectively. Compared to classical solutions, our proposed approach can ensure the unconditional security and the perfect privacy protection based on the physical principle of quantum mechanics.

Multiparty session types as coherence proofs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Carbone, Marco; Montesi, Fabrizio; Schürmann, Carsten

2017-01-01

We propose a Curry–Howard correspondence between a language for programming multiparty sessions and a generalisation of Classical Linear Logic (CLL). In this framework, propositions correspond to the local behaviour of a participant in a multiparty session type, proofs to processes, and proof nor...

Multi-party Quantum Computation

OpenAIRE

Smith, Adam

2001-01-01

We investigate definitions of and protocols for multi-party quantum computing in the scenario where the secret data are quantum systems. We work in the quantum information-theoretic model, where no assumptions are made on the computational power of the adversary. For the slightly weaker task of verifiable quantum secret sharing, we give a protocol which tolerates any t < n/4 cheating parties (out of n). This is shown to be optimal. We use this new tool to establish that any multi-party quantu...

Multiparty Computations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dziembowski, Stefan

here and discuss other problems caused by the adaptiveness. All protocols in the thesis are formally specified and the proofs of their security are given. [1]Ronald Cramer, Ivan Damgård, Stefan Dziembowski, Martin Hirt, and Tal Rabin. Efficient multiparty computations with dishonest minority......In this thesis we study a problem of doing Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) and Multiparty Computations in a model where private channels between the players and a broadcast channel is available. The adversary is active, adaptive and has an unbounded computing power. The thesis is based on two...... to a polynomial time black-box reduction, the complexity of adaptively secure VSS is the same as that of ordinary secret sharing (SS), where security is only required against a passive, static adversary. Previously, such a connection was only known for linear secret sharing and VSS schemes. We then show...

Free Press in a Constitutional Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Lucianek, Christine

2014-01-01

This article describes a lesson in which students will examine several views expressed by the founders to understand the context for including freedom of the press in the First Amendment. Students will be asked to think about the role that the news media and the need to be an informed citizen continue to play in our democracy. Students will…

A Domain-Specific Programming Language for Secure Multiparty Computation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Janus Dam; Schwartzbach, Michael Ignatieff

2007-01-01

We present a domain-specific programming language for Secure Multiparty Computation (SMC). Information is a resource of vital importance and considerable economic value to individuals, public administration, and private companies. This means that the confidentiality of information is crucial...... on secret values and results are only revealed according to specific protocols. We identify the key linguistic concepts of SMC and bridge the gap between high-level security requirements and low-level cryptographic operations constituting an SMC platform, thus improving the efficiency and security of SMC...

Multiparty Session Types as Coherence Proofs

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Carbone, Marco; Montesi, Fabrizio; Schürmann, Carsten

2015-01-01

We propose a Curry-Howard correspondence between a language for programming multiparty sessions and a generalisation of Classical Linear Logic (CLL). In this framework, propositions correspond to the local behaviour of a participant in a multiparty session type, proofs to processes, and proof...... normalisation to executing communications. Our key contribution is generalising duality, from CLL, to a new notion of n-ary compatibility, called coherence. Building on coherence as a principle of compositionality, we generalise the cut rule of CLL to a new rule for composing many processes communicating...... in a multiparty session. We prove the soundness of our model by showing the admissibility of our new rule, which entails deadlock-freedom via our correspondence....

Cryptographic framework for document-objects resulting from multiparty collaborative transactions.

Science.gov (United States)

Goh, A

2000-01-01

Multiparty transactional frameworks--i.e. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or Health Level (HL) 7--often result in composite documents which can be accurately modelled using hyperlinked document-objects. The structural complexity arising from multiauthor involvement and transaction-specific sequencing would be poorly handled by conventional digital signature schemes based on a single evaluation of a one-way hash function and asymmetric cryptography. In this paper we outline the generation of structure-specific authentication hash-trees for the the authentication of transactional document-objects, followed by asymmetric signature generation on the hash-tree value. Server-side multi-client signature verification would probably constitute the single most compute-intensive task, hence the motivation for our usage of the Rabin signature protocol which results in significantly reduced verification workloads compared to the more commonly applied Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) protocol. Data privacy is handled via symmetric encryption of message traffic using session-specific keys obtained through key-negotiation mechanisms based on discrete-logarithm cryptography. Individual client-to-server channels can be secured using a double key-pair variation of Diffie-Hellman (DH) key negotiation, usage of which also enables bidirectional node authentication. The reciprocal server-to-client multicast channel is secured through Burmester-Desmedt (BD) key-negotiation which enjoys significant advantages over the usual multiparty extensions to the DH protocol. The implementation of hash-tree signatures and bi/multidirectional key negotiation results in a comprehensive cryptographic framework for multiparty document-objects satisfying both authentication and data privacy requirements.

Democracy and the Symbolic Constitution of Society

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lindahl, H.K.

1998-01-01

Abstract. Building on Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms, this paper argues that the continuities and discontinuities characterizing the passage from medieval politics to modern democracy can best be understood by reference to political power's symbolic structure. For the one, political power,

Multi-party semi-quantum key distribution-convertible multi-party semi-quantum secret sharing

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Kun-Fei; Gu, Jun; Hwang, Tzonelih; Gope, Prosanta

2017-08-01

This paper proposes a multi-party semi-quantum secret sharing (MSQSS) protocol which allows a quantum party (manager) to share a secret among several classical parties (agents) based on GHZ-like states. By utilizing the special properties of GHZ-like states, the proposed scheme can easily detect outside eavesdropping attacks and has the highest qubit efficiency among the existing MSQSS protocols. Then, we illustrate an efficient way to convert the proposed MSQSS protocol into a multi-party semi-quantum key distribution (MSQKD) protocol. The proposed approach is even useful to convert all the existing measure-resend type of semi-quantum secret sharing protocols into semi-quantum key distribution protocols.

The Obligations on Government and Society in our Constitutional State to Respect and Support Independent Constitutional Structures

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

LWH Ackermann

2000-05-01

Full Text Available Constitutional democracy recognises the ancient democratic principle that government of a country is based on and legitimated by the will and consent of the governed, which is determined by regular multi-party elections based on universal adult franchise. Constitutional democracy limits this principle by subjecting the democratically elected government and the will of the majority subject to a written constitution and the norms embodied in it. Such constitution is enshrined as the supreme law of the country in question. An almost universal feature of modern constitutionalism is a Bill of Rights that forms part of the Constitution and which is designed to protect and enforce individual rights principally, although not exclusively, against the state. Constitutionalism also embodies the principle of the separation of powers. A competent and independent judiciary, with the power to review all legislative and executive conduct that is inconsistent with the Constitution, is regarded, almost universally, as the prime and most effective check on the legislative and executive branches of government. Recently it has come to be realised that for the truly effective and meaningful operation of constitutionalism, other independent state institutions are necessary. The collective objective of these institutions is to ensure that the Constitution in fact produces what it proclaims: that constitutionalism becomes a way of life in all institutional structures. The South African Constitution has clearly designated the judiciary as the prime upholder and enforcer of the Constitution. The Constitution has, however, gone further and makes provision for a variety of independent state institutions whose purpose is to "strengthen constitutional democracy in the Republic". Apart from these state institutions the Constitution also makes provision for other independent bodies designed to play an important checking and balancing role. The regular effective functioning of

7 CFR 1726.204 - Multiparty unit price quotations.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 11 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Multiparty unit price quotations. 1726.204 Section....204 Multiparty unit price quotations. The borrower or its engineer must contact a sufficient number of... basis of written unit price quotations, the borrower will select the supplier or contractor based on the...

7 CFR 1726.205 - Multiparty lump sum quotations.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 11 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Multiparty lump sum quotations. 1726.205 Section 1726....205 Multiparty lump sum quotations. The borrower or its engineer must contact a sufficient number of... basis of written lump sum quotations, the borrower will select the supplier or contractor based on the...

Artistic Constitutions of the Civil Domain: On Art, Education and Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Gielen, Pascal

2017-01-01

How can we understand the relationship between art, education and democracy in the contemporary Western political condition? The recent presidential elections in the USA showed that the classical model of liberal representative democracy is shaking on its foundations. The question is how can artists and education respond to this political…

The review of constitutional norms concerning local public administration in the view of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission)

OpenAIRE

Apostolache, Mihai

2015-01-01

The proposals of the Commission to review the Constitution of Romania were subject to the analysis of experts from the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission), who expressed their opinion in a report adopted at the 98th plenary session of the European body. The article analyzes the recommendations of the Venice Commission regarding the proposed changes to the constitutional norms governing local public administration, comprising some general aspects concern...

Multiparty Asynchronous Session Types

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Honda, Kohei; Yoshida, Nobuko; Carbone, Marco

2016-01-01

. This work extends the foregoing theories of binary session types to multiparty, asynchronous sessions, which often arise in practical communication-centered applications. Presented as a typed calculus for mobile processes, the theory introduces a new notion of types in which interactions involving multiple......Communication is a central elements in software development. As a potential typed foundation for structured communication-centered programming, session types have been studied over the past decade for a wide range of process calculi and programming languages, focusing on binary (two-party) sessions...... peers are directly abstracted as a global scenario. Global types retain the friendly type syntax of binary session types while specifying dependencies and capturing complex causal chains of multiparty asynchronous interactions. A global type plays the role of a shared agreement among communication peers...

Semi-Homomorphic Encryption and Multiparty Computation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bendlin, Rikke; Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Orlandi, Claudio

2011-01-01

allow us to construct an efficient multiparty computation protocol for arithmetic circuits, UC-secure against a dishonest majority. The protocol consists of a preprocessing phase and an online phase. Neither the inputs nor the function to be computed have to be known during preprocessing. Moreover......, the online phase is extremely efficient as it requires no cryptographic operations: the parties only need to exchange additive shares and verify information theoretic MACs. Our contribution is therefore twofold: from a theoretical point of view, we can base multiparty computation on a variety of different...

Understanding of Democracy among Young People in Croatia

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Vladimir Vujčić

2005-01-01

Full Text Available The task of this paper was to explore how young people understand the values of democracy, how much they believe in democracy as a political system, how much they are satisfi ed with the way democracy works (“constitution at work”, and how much they trust government institutions. It is important to analyse the understanding of democracy, for democracy is dependent on the citizens’ opinions and the level of their political culture rather than on its normative constitution and formal value system. Thus, this analysis joins in the debate between foundationalists and antifoundationalists on democracy and its functioning. The present model of research has provided insights into the relationship between so-called diff use and specifi c support of democracy (D. Easton and an explanation of that which R. Dahl defi nes as the “democratic paradox” in contemporary democracies. This scrutiny shows that young people in Croatia understand democracy within the framework of liberal values, but also that they largely tend towards so-called consensual democracy and a socialist syndrome involving a prevalent aspiration to social equality and an economically interventionist state. Moreover, the analysis shows that young people in Croatia have a low level of democratic legitimation and an even lower level of trust in government institutions. This is not a good basis for the development of stable and well-functioning democracy in Croatian society. It all warns against serious shortcomings in the political education of young people in Croatia and in the development of democratic political culture and democratic citizenship.

Channel capacities versus entanglement measures in multiparty quantum states

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sen, Aditi; Sen, Ujjwal

2010-01-01

For quantum states of two subsystems, highly entangled states have a higher capacity of transmitting classical as well as quantum information, and vice versa. We show that this is no more the case in general: Quantum capacities of multiaccess channels, motivated by communication in quantum networks, do not have any relation with genuine multiparty entanglement measures. Importantly, the statement is demonstrated for arbitrary multipartite entanglement measures. Along with revealing the structural richness of multiaccess channels, this gives us a tool to classify multiparty quantum states from the perspective of its usefulness in quantum networks, which cannot be visualized by any genuine multiparty entanglement measure.

An Erlang Implementation of Multiparty Session Actors

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Simon Fowler

2016-08-01

Full Text Available By requiring co-ordination to take place using explicit message passing instead of relying on shared memory, actor-based programming languages have been shown to be effective tools for building reliable and fault-tolerant distributed systems. Although naturally communication-centric, communication patterns in actor-based applications remain informally specified, meaning that errors in communication are detected late, if at all. Multiparty session types are a formalism to describe, at a global level, the interactions between multiple communicating entities. This article describes the implementation of a prototype framework for monitoring Erlang/OTP gen_server applications against multiparty session types, showing how previous work on multiparty session actors can be adapted to a purely actor-based language, and how monitor violations and termination of session participants can be reported in line with the Erlang mantra of "let it fail". Finally, the framework is used to implement two case studies: an adaptation of a freely-available DNS server, and a chat server.

Implications of a Non-Unified Command System and the Need for a Unified Command System in Zambia

Science.gov (United States)

2015-06-12

aspects. It has been found that Zambia’s two attempts to unify its system happened during the one party participatory democracy era. Since the coming...and its Implication for Democracy ,” in Ourselves to Know: Civil Military Relations and Defence Transformation in Southern Africa, eds. Rocky Williams...adopted a multiparty system of government under the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) which decided to revert to independent commands. As

How is an absolute democracy possible?

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Joanna Bednarek

2011-01-01

Full Text Available In the last part of the Empire trilogy, Commonwealth, Negri and Hardt ask about the possibility of the self-governance of the multitude. When answering, they argue that absolute democracy, understood as the political articulation of the multitude that does not entail its unification (construction of the people is possible. As Negri states, this way of thinking about political articulation is rooted in the tradition of democratic materialism and constitutes the alternative to the dominant current of modern political philosophy that identifies political power with sovereignty. The multitude organizes itself politically by means of the constitutive power, identical with the ontological creativity or productivity of the multitude. To state the problem of political organization means to state the problem of class composition: political democracy is at the same time economic democracy.

Bioethics and deliberative democracy: five warnings from Hobbes.

Science.gov (United States)

Trotter, Griffin

2006-06-01

Thomas Hobbes is one of the most ardent and thoroughgoing opponents of participatory democracy among Western political philosophers. Though Hobbes's alternative to participatory democracy-assent by subjects to rule by an absolute sovereign-no longer constitutes a viable political alternative for Westerners, his critique of participatory democracy is a potentially valuable source of insight about its liabilities. This essay elaborates five theses from Hobbes that stand as cogent warnings to those who embrace participatory democracy, especially those (such as most bioethicists) advocating for deliberative democracy based on a rational consensus model. In light of these warnings, the author suggests an alternative, modus vivendi approach to deliberative democracy that would radically alter the current practice of bioethics.

Romanian Democracy, Theory and Method

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Romulus Brâncoveanu

2013-02-01

Full Text Available This is a comment on the type of democracy in Romania, as illiberal democracy. Given the Romanian democratization process, we can hope that, in the future, all populisms and politicization will cease, and a true liberal and constitutional democracy will be installed, which will not be a „Romanian democracy” as Paul Wolfowitz suggested to be exported in Iraq. The question is whether it is good or not to „export” such a political model. „Romanian democracy” could be an exporting model only as an alternative to dictatorship and under the assumption that it will be adjusted in time, under the external pressure.

Constitutional Politics, Constitutional Texts and Democratic Variety in Central and Eastern Europe

OpenAIRE

Blokker, Paul

2008-01-01

In the paper, it is argued that democratization in Central and Eastern Europe involves important forms of differentiation of democracy, rather than merely convergence to a singular – liberal-democratic, constitutional - model. One way of taking up democratic differentiation in post-communist societies is by analysing the constitutional documents of the new democratic orders, and the constitutional politics leading to the foundational documents. In a first step, the paper analyses constitution...

Analysis of multiparty mediation processes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vuković, Siniša

2013-01-01

Crucial challenges for multiparty mediation processes include the achievement of adequate cooperation among the mediators and consequent coordination of their activities in the mediation process. Existing literature goes only as far as to make it clear that successful mediation requires necessary

FROM THE MULTI-PARTY PROCESS OF CLASS ACTIONS TO THE COLLECTIVE PROCESS OF REPETITIVE CASES: MODELS OF COLLECTIVE TUTELAGE IN BRAZILIAN LAW

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Graziela Argenta

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the models of multi-party litigation established in Brazilian law, considering the class action model and the model systematized by the Civil Procedure Code of 2015 consisting of repetitive case judgments. It exposes the evolution, influences and consolidation of multi-party litigation in the Brazilian legal system, identifies the collective actions microsystem and deals with its relationship with the Civil Procedure Codes of 1973 and 2015, under a constitutional perspective. It presents characteristics of the incident of resolution of repetitive demands and the repetitive extraordinary and special appeals, with comparisons with the model of class actions. It discusses, from a comparative law perspective, the three great models of collective tutelage (American, European, and Brazilian in their relationship with the holders of individual rights. Finally, it brings forward considerations about the due process of law, presenting a doctrinal vision based on the need to evaluate the conflict and the complexity of the litigation to adapt the forms of multi-party conflicts resolution.

Construção constitucional e teorias da democracia Forms of constitution making and theories of democracy

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Andrew Arato

1997-01-01

Full Text Available Com base numa tipologia de formas de construção constitucional e com ênfase nos processos de constitucionalização chega-se a um conjunto de princípios básicos para vincular a construção constitucional às exigências da democracia. A análise concentra-se simultaneamente na reconstrução de casos históricos e no exame crítico das teorias relevantes. Especial atenção é dada às reivindicações do modelo norte-americano como exemplar. Os processos em andamento de mudança constitucional na Europa do Leste também são discutidos.On the basis of a typology of forms of constitution making and with emphasis on the constitutionalization process a set of basic principles for linking constitution making with the demands of democracy is put forward. The analysis deals both with the reconstruction of historical cases and with the critical examination of relevant theories. Special attention is given to the claims concerning the exemplary character of the American model. The ongoing processes of constitutional change in Eastern Europe are also discussed.

Timed Runtime Monitoring for Multiparty Conversations

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Rumyana Neykova

2014-08-01

Full Text Available We propose a dynamic verification framework for protocols in real-time distributed systems. The framework is based on Scribble, a tool-chain for design and verification of choreographies based on multiparty session types, developed with our industrial partners. Drawing from recent work on multiparty session types for real-time interactions, we extend Scribble with clocks, resets, and clock predicates constraining the times in which interactions should occur. We present a timed API for Python to program distributed implementations of Scribble specifications. A dynamic verification framework ensures the safe execution of applications written with our timed API: we have implemented dedicated runtime monitors that check that each interaction occurs at a correct timing with respect to the corresponding Scribble specification. The performance of our implementation and its practicability are analysed via benchmarking.

Secure multiparty computation goes live

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bogetoft, P.; Christensen, D.L.; Damgard, Ivan; Geisler, M.; Jakobsen, T.; Kroigaard, M.; Nielsen, J.D.; Nielsen, J.B.; Nielsen, K.; Pagter, J.; Schwartzbach, M.; Toft, T.; Dingledine, R.; Golle, Ph.

2009-01-01

In this note, we report on the first large-scale and practical application of secure multiparty computation, which took place in January 2008. We also report on the novel cryptographic protocols that were used. This work was supported by the Danish Strategic Research Council and the European

Secure multiparty computation goes live

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bogetoft, Peter; Christensen, Dan Lund; Damgård, Ivan Bjerre

2009-01-01

In this note, we report on the first large-scale and practical application of secure multiparty computation, which took place in January 2008. We also report on the novel cryptographic protocols that were used. This work was supported by the Danish Strategic Research Council and the European...

Post-militarism: provenance of praetorian democracy in nigerian, 1999

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The development of 'command democracy' took root during this period. On the basis of the empirical evidence adduced, the paper argued that the phenomenon of 'praetorian democracy' which became visible from 1999 to 2007 undermined the constitution and due democratic process. Executive contempt for the rule of law ...

Constitutional Referendums:A Theoretical Enquiry

OpenAIRE

Tierney, Stephen

2009-01-01

In recent decades the use of referendums to settle major constitutional questions has increased dramatically. Addressing this phenomenon as a case study in the relationship between democracy and constitutional sovereignty, this article has two aims.The first is to argue that these constitutional referendums are categorically different from ordinary, legislative referendums, and that this has important implications for theories of constitutional sovereignty. Secondly, the article suggests that...

Multiparty Computation for Dishonest Majority

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Orlandi, Claudio

2010-01-01

Multiparty computation protocols have been known for more than twenty years now, but due to their lack of efficiency their use is still limited in real-world applications: the goal of this paper is the design of efficient two and multi party computation protocols aimed to fill the gap between the...

A New Index of Democracy

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Jesús M. de Miguel

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The present paper analyses and revises the latest Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit in the United Kingdom. We analyze the changes produced in the index from 2006 to 2011, as well as in the five basic factors that constitute the index: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. The analysis of these factors ?measured by sixty variables? has made it possible to develop a new index, based on the data from 167 countries, and calculate a revised ranking. Countries have been classified into four types: democracies, flawed democracies, mixed systems, and authoritarian/totalitarian regimes. The new index permits a better understanding of the impact of the crisis through variables such as economic growth, human development, quality of life, corruption, and violence.

Multiparty quantum key agreement with single particles

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Bin; Gao, Fei; Huang, Wei; Wen, Qiao-yan

2013-04-01

Two conditions must be satisfied in a secure quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol: (1) outside eavesdroppers cannot gain the generated key without introducing any error; (2) the generated key cannot be determined by any non-trivial subset of the participants. That is, a secure QKA protocol can not only prevent the outside attackers from stealing the key, but also resist the attack from inside participants, i.e. some dishonest participants determine the key alone by illegal means. How to resist participant attack is an aporia in the design of QKA protocols, especially the multi-party ones. In this paper we present the first secure multiparty QKA protocol against both outside and participant attacks. Further more, we have proved its security in detail.

Constitutional changes and the dilemmas of constitutionalism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arsen Bačić

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The need to develop constitutional mechanisms whose aim is to resolve fundamental relations in society demands the widest possible inclusion of all of society’s active participants in the discussion on the need to adopt or revise the Constitution. The opening of every new round of constitutional changes is of great importance because it always unlocks certain new and important questions. The answers to those questions should be offered by state authority (policy and civil society including science and its disciplines. In this paper, the author mentions several topics which are of interest in the current discussion on the significance of current constitutional changes for the future of the development of constitutionalism and democracy in the Republic of Croatia. These are above all topics of political and legal constitutionalism and suggestions linked to strengthening the independence of judicial powers. The author advocates consistent application of constitutional control and check mechanisms which exclude all insularity of judicial powers in relation to democratic control.

Constitutional judges (guarantee of the Constitution and responsibility

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francisco Javier Ansuátegui Roig

2012-06-01

Full Text Available My aim in this paper is to propose a reflection on the position and the importance that the constitutional judge has in the legal systems of contemporary constitutionalism. The figure of the judge responsible of protecting the Constitution is a key institution, without which we cannot understand the laws of constitutional democracies, their current lines of development, and the guarantee of rights and freedoms that constitute the normative core of these systems. Moreover, the reflection on the exercise of the powers of the judge, its scope and its justification is an important part of contemporary legal discussion, still relevant, albeit not exclusively - in the field of legal philosophy. The object of attention of my reflection is the judge who has the power of judicial review, in a scheme of defense of the Constitution, regardless the specific ways of this defense.

Mexico – A New Narco-Democracy in Latin America?

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Lidija Kos-Stanišić

2011-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper, the author analyses the democratic transition and the first decade of the Mexican democracy. She points out that the democratic transition took place parallel with a huge expansion of the drug business, which caused the creation of extraconstitutional actors – drug cartels. The situation is particularly pressing in six Mexican federal states where the drug cartels cause deficiencies in the functioning of the majority of partial regimes of constitutional democracy. The conclusion raises fears that the collapse of democracy might extend to other federal states and that Mexico could turn into a narco-democracy in its entire national territory.

Factors that influence the realization of the constitutional – legal protection

OpenAIRE

Safet Emruli

2018-01-01

The constitutional justice system represents the main actor of the establishment and the harmonious functioning of true democracy, because it implies the spirit of the constitution, where the rules of democracy, rule of law and the protection of the rights and freedoms of the citizens are envisaged, is respected and implemented in real life. The constitutional justice, in fact, represents the key segment that guarantees the vitality and efficiency of the judicial order. As such, it emerged as...

Narcissistic group dynamics of multiparty systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schruijer, S.G.L.

2015-01-01

Purpose – This paper aims to introduce and illustrate the notion of narcissistic group dynamics. It is claimed that narcissism does not simply reside within individuals but can be characteristic of groups and social systems. In this case, the focus is on narcissistic dynamics in multiparty systems.

Multiparty Computation from Threshold Homomorphic Encryption

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cramer, Ronald; Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Nielsen, Jesper Buus

2001-01-01

We introduce a new approach to multiparty computation (MPC) basing it on homomorphic threshold crypto-systems. We show that given keys for any sufficiently efficient system of this type, general MPC protocols for n parties can be devised which are secure against an active adversary that corrupts...

E-democracy and public administrators: the Malaysian case

OpenAIRE

Abu Bakar, Abdul Gapar

2017-01-01

The thesis investigates public administrators’ use of interactive Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in the Malaysian Federal Public Service (MFPS). It describes qualitative research which identifies the nature of e-democracy practices in policy development in the MFPS. In-depth interviews and scholarly as well as government documents provide empirical evidence. Through a survey of literature, contextual features such as absence of policy in the MFPS for e-democracy, constitut...

Constitutional judge and presidential reelection in Latin America

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ernesto Cárdenas

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Constitutional provisions regarding presidential re-election have been modified in several Latin American countries in recent years. In some countries, these changes put the existence of democracy at risk. This article uses the principal-agent approach to analyze the role of the constitutional judge in presidential re-election as an accountability mechanism. It finds that immediate reelection in democracies of strong presidentialism can be a perverse mechanism that sharpens the concentration of power and deteriorates the welfare of the citizens instead of making politicians accountable.

Cheater detection in SPDZ multiparty computation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

G. Spini (Gabriele); S. Fehr (Serge); A. Nascimento; P. Barreto

2016-01-01

textabstractIn this work we revisit the SPDZ multiparty computation protocol by Damgård et al. for securely computing a function in the presence of an unbounded number of dishonest parties. The SPDZ protocol is distinguished by its fast performance. A downside of the SPDZ protocol is that one single

Coherence Generalises Duality: A Logical Explanation of Multiparty Session Types

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Carbone, Marco; Lindley, Sam; Montesi, Fabrizio

2016-01-01

the duality of classical linear logic (relating two types) with a more general notion of coherence (relating an arbitrary number of types). This paper introduces variants of CP and MCP, plus a new intermediate calculus of Globally-governed Classical Processes (GCP). We show a tight relation between......Wadler introduced Classical Processes (CP), a calculus based on a propositions-as-types correspondence between propositions of classical linear logic and session types. Carbone et al. introduced Multiparty Classical Processes, a calculus that generalises CP to multiparty session types, by replacing...

Efficiently outsourcing multiparty computation under multiple keys

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Peter, Andreas; Tews, Erik; Tews, Erik; Katzenbeisser, Stefan

2013-01-01

Secure multiparty computation enables a set of users to evaluate certain functionalities on their respective inputs while keeping these inputs encrypted throughout the computation. In many applications, however, outsourcing these computations to an untrusted server is desirable, so that the server

Efficient Solutions to Two-Party and Multiparty Millionaires’ Problem

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xin Liu

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The millionaires’ problem is the basis of secure multiparty computation and has many applications. Using a vectorization method and the Paillier encryption scheme, we first propose a secure two-party solution to the millionaires’ problem, which can determine x=y,  xy in one execution. Subsequently, using the vectorization and secret splitting methods, we propose an information-theoretically secure protocol to solve the multiparty millionaires’ problem (a.k.a. secure sorting problem, and this protocol can resist collusion attacks. We analyze the accuracy and security of our protocols in the semihonest model and compare the computational and communication complexities between the proposed protocols and the existing ones.

Teferi Bekele Ayana Abstract Consociational democracy model is a ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Keywords: Consociational democracy, FDRE Constitution, Lijphart's Guidelines, minority, ..... addressed the issue that the present study tried to examine. ... At times, the FDRE. Constitution may be silent or less clear on issues under consideration thereby making the task of analysis difficult. In that case, the researcher has ...

Freedom of Expression: Importing European & US Constitutional Models in Transitional Democracies

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Belavusau, U.

2013-01-01

This book considers the issue of free speech in transitional democracies focusing on the socio-legal developments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In showing how these Central and Eastern European countries have engaged with free speech models imported from the Council of Europe / EU and

Teaching about American Federal Democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Schechter, Stephen L., Ed.

Ten essays discuss federal democracy, the form of government of the United States. The first essay discusses the origins of American federalism. The second examines why we have a federal system, the functions federalism serves, and the consequences of federalism for the American political system. Federalism in the Constitution and constitutional…

Monitoring multi-party contracts for E-business

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Xu, L.

2004-01-01

"Monitoring multi-party contracts for E-business" investigates the issues involved in the performance of econtract monitoring of business automations in business to business e-commerce environment. A pro-active monitoring contract model and monitoring mechanism have been designed and developed. A

POLITIK PENYEDERHANAAN SISTEM KEPARTAIAN DI INDONESIA PASCA REFORMASI 1998

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Agus Sutisna

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Since the 1999 elections electoral democracy Indonesia is marked by drastic changes in the party system implementation, from simple multi-party system in the New Order era to the extreme multiparty system. Judging from the election as the most massive space is provided to facilitate the political participation of the people, multiparty phenomenon is certainly a sign that democracy was growing. But in terms of the need to realize the importance of a stable and effective government, multiparty phenomenon is actually not a wise choice. Scott Mainwaring comparison study results conclude that the application of a multi-party system with a presidential system is a bad combination. That is why since the 2004 elections simplification efforts of party system in Indonesia is done through various policy strategy. This paper is a study about the application of extreme multiparty system and its impact on the election, the behavior of political parties in Parliament, and the relation of Parliament-President; and political strategy or policy simplification of party system that has been taken in Indonesia after the reform to realize a simple multiparty system. Permalink/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/sd.v2i2.2816

Parsimonious data: How a single Facebook like predicts voting behavior in multiparty systems.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jakob Bæk Kristensen

Full Text Available This study shows how liking politicians' public Facebook posts can be used as an accurate measure for predicting present-day voter intention in a multiparty system. We highlight that a few, but selective digital traces produce prediction accuracies that are on par or even greater than most current approaches based upon bigger and broader datasets. Combining the online and offline, we connect a subsample of surveyed respondents to their public Facebook activity and apply machine learning classifiers to explore the link between their political liking behaviour and actual voting intention. Through this work, we show that even a single selective Facebook like can reveal as much about political voter intention as hundreds of heterogeneous likes. Further, by including the entire political like history of the respondents, our model reaches prediction accuracies above previous multiparty studies (60-70%. The main contribution of this paper is to show how public like-activity on Facebook allows political profiling of individual users in a multiparty system with accuracies above previous studies. Beside increased accuracies, the paper shows how such parsimonious measures allows us to generalize our findings to the entire population of a country and even across national borders, to other political multiparty systems. The approach in this study relies on data that are publicly available, and the simple setup we propose can with some limitations, be generalized to millions of users in other multiparty systems.

Efficient Multi-Party Computation over Rings

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Cramer, Ronald; Fehr, Serge; Ishai, Yuval

2003-01-01

Secure multi-party computation (MPC) is an active research area, and a wide range of literature can be found nowadays suggesting improvements and generalizations of existing protocols in various directions. However, all current techniques for secure MPC apply to functions that are represented by ...... the usefulness of the above results by presenting a novel application of MPC over (non-field) rings to the round-efficient secure computation of the maximum function. Basic Research in Computer Science (www.brics.dk), funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.......Secure multi-party computation (MPC) is an active research area, and a wide range of literature can be found nowadays suggesting improvements and generalizations of existing protocols in various directions. However, all current techniques for secure MPC apply to functions that are represented...... by (boolean or arithmetic) circuits over finite fields. We are motivated by two limitations of these techniques: – Generality. Existing protocols do not apply to computation over more general algebraic structures (except via a brute-force simulation of computation in these structures). – Efficiency. The best...

Cicero and the Mixed Constitution (res publica mixta

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Mitja Sadek

2009-12-01

Full Text Available The story of the mixed constitution is the story of the most stable and just constitution. In theory, this is a combination of at least two of the three elementary forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, with some advantages that elementary forms may lack. It originated with the deliberation of Greek philosophers, who wanted to draw up a constitution safeguarding against the permanent variation of elementary constitutional forms and against coups d’état. For both Plato and Aristotle, the mixed constitution was, above all, the reflection of a search for balance between the two extreme forms of government, direct (Athenian democracy on the one hand and the exclusion of the people from governing on the other. The Greek theory was applied by the historian Polybius to the traditional tripartite constitution of the Roman republic. In his view, the consuls were monarchic elements, the senate an aristocratic element, and the comitia a democratic one. Cicero’s introduction of the idea of the mixed constitution in De re publica can only be understood in the light of the author’s personal situation and contemporary political circumstances. His political engagement at a time when the republic was gradually transforming into a monarchy aimed at restoring the important role of the nobility, represented by the senate. For Cicero, the mixed constitution was mainly an instrument for restoring the lost balance between the consuls, the senate, and the comitia, a last chance to save the decaying republic. The concluding part of the article addresses Alois Riklin’s recent discussion of the modern reception of the mixed constitution idea, which advances the controversial thesis that the paradigm of power division, the foundation of modern representative democracy, originates directly from the mixed constitution.

A family of multi-party authentication protocols

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Cremers, C.J.F.; Mauw, S.

2006-01-01

We introduce a family of multi-party authentication protocols and discuss six novel protocols, which are members of this family. The first three generalize the well-known Needham-Schroeder-Lowe public-key protocol, the Needham-Schroeder private-key protocol, and the Bilateral Key Exchange protocol.

The European Constitution: sovereignty, legitimacy and constituent power

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Signe Larsen

2014-06-01

Full Text Available On the basis of Hannah Arendt’s and Carl Schmitt’s writings on the constituent power, this article sets out to develop an interpretative framework which would aid the understanding of the legitimation crisis of European integration initiated by the EU constitutional failure of 2004. The question raised in this essay is whether the successful establishment of democratic constitutional legitimacy is conditional upon the existence of a federal state. From the perspective of the constituent power, two opposing answers are given based on two rivalling notions of the ultimate meaning of constitutional politics: freedom and security. The article concludes that even though the EU as a case remains undecided, it seems likely that democracy and constitutional politics have parted ways in the EU both in the Arendtian and in the Schmittian sense. If that is the case, the constitutional crisis is a serious problem for the future of democracy in the EU.

Theoretical (dis-) position and strategic leitmotivs in constitutional ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This essay takes a look at the historic restoration that bequeathed this country and its people a prototypical, justiciable Constitution. The advent of constitutional democracy in South Africa went hand in hand with an about-turn in the interpretation of enacted law-texts (including the Constitution) and a critical interrogation of ...

Constitutional Crowdsourcing to Reconcile Demos with Aristos and Nomos

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Abat Ninet, Antoni

2017-01-01

it is framed, been liberal democracies or authoritarian states. Derrida stated there is a sort of “semantic indeterminacy” at the core of democracy and that constitutional crowdsourcing is a way to intervene in this indeterminacy. The Icelandic example enlightened that there is a way to mediate between....... The final segment of the paper aims to obtain different elements to improve the constitutional crowdsourcing to be considered in future constituent processes around the world. From a formal perspective the paper simulates a judgment between a Plaintiff Demos (representing “We the People” the entitled...

Measurement study of multi-party video conferencing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lu, Y.; Zhao, Y.; Kuipers, F.A.; Van Mieghem, P.

2010-01-01

More and more free multi-party video conferencing applications are readily available over the Internet and both Server-to-Client (S/C) or Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies are used. Investigating their mechanisms, analyzing their system performance, and measuring their quality are important objectives

Auctoritas non veritas facit Legem; a response to Prof. Roberto Niembro´s conceptualisation of Authoritatian Constitutionalism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Abat Ninet, Antoni

2017-01-01

. This interest has different reasons, some of them related with the current majoritarian epistemological doctrine that links constitutionalism with democracy, freedom and equality. Today we conceive a constitution as a charter of rights and freedoms, as a synonym of legal and political guarantee, a device......Beginning the new Century there are more constitutional democracies than ever and authoritarian regimes seems to be weaker, isolated and more pointed and under pressure. Even so, the analysis of the relation between constitutionalism and authoritarianism continues fascinating academics worldwide...... to protect minorities and limit public power and arbitrariness. We also tend to relate a constitution with the best values and virtues of the rule of law that links symbiotically democracy and law. Constitutionalism is then a device that maintains alive this relation....

The Constitution's Prescription for Freedom.

Science.gov (United States)

Peach, Lucinda

1986-01-01

Examines how the framers of the Constitution came to choose our system of government, how that system was designed to function, and how the separation of powers has served to maintain our democracy despite attempts to violate it. (JDH)

THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY - LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS -

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marius ANDREESCU

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The equality in human rights and obligations, the equality of citizens before the law are fundamental categories of the theories on social democracy but also conditions of the lawful state, without which constitutional democracy cannot be conceived. In Romanian Constitution, this principle is consecrated in the form of equality of the citizens before the law and public authorities. There are also particular aspects of this principle consecrated in the Constitution. The constitutional principle of equality requires that equal treatment be applied to equal situations. This social and legal reality implies numerous interferences between the principle of equality and other constitutional principles. In this study, by using theoretical and jurisprudential arguments, we intend to demonstrate that, in relation to contemporary social reality, equality, as a constitutional principle, is a particular aspect of the principle of proportionality. The latter one expresses in essence the ideas of: fairness, justice, reasonableness and fair appropriateness of state decisions to the facts and legitimate aims proposed.

Open Government: A Tool for Democracy?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emiliana De Blasio

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The growing disconnection between citizens and decision-makers is pushing politics towards a re-shaping of institutional design. New spaces of political participation are sustained and even reinforced by communication, especially by digital communication. Governments and public administrations can find and use different models to facilitate citizens’ participation; e-government, open government and a specific design of digital democracy. In this respect, open government can constitute a way to re-connect citizens and political institutions, but at the same time, it can also be an “appealing” tool to institutionalize bottom-up participation and so anesthetizing it. The aim of this article is to present the first findings of an international research project about open government and participatory platforms in four European countries (France, Italy, Spain, the UK. The study tries to understand if participatory platforms can improve the quality of democracy, and if open government can contribute to democratizing democracy.

[Sociology of health, social ecology and media democracy].

Science.gov (United States)

Julesz, Máté

2012-05-27

The correlation of the sociology of health, social ecology and media democracy is demonstrated in the study. In societies of today, the role of the media is unquestionable in disseminating information relating to health and the environment. According to Paragraph (1) of Article XXI of the Hungarian Constitution of 2011, everyone has the right to a healthy environment. An environmentalist media democracy may forward environmental justice, environmental education, and environmentalist economy, etc. All these are required in order to establish a society where the healthy environment is an objective value.

The Rise of Direct Democracy in Croatia: Balancing or Challenging Parliamentary Representation?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Butković Hrvoje

2017-03-01

Full Text Available In 2010 the Croatian Constitution was changed to lower the requirements for the implementation of direct democracy at the national level, in order to save the referendum on Croatia’s EU membership from possible failure. Since then, Croatia has witnessed a sharp increase in people’s initiatives that have managed to block a number of the government’s reform proposals. Therefore, the newly discovered appeal of direct democracy in Croatia has created a new environment for the operation of its representative democracy. Starting from theoretical notions, this paper analyses the practice of direct democracy in selected transitional countries, which could be instructive for Croatia. In its central part, the paper explores the obstacles that stand in the way of the efficient implementation of direct democracy in Croatia.

Negative Campaigning and the Logic of Retaliation in Multiparty Competition.

Science.gov (United States)

Dolezal, Martin; Ennser-Jedenastik, Laurenz; Müller, Wolfgang C

2016-04-01

The extant literature has demonstrated that the logic of retaliation is a core feature of negative campaigning. Attacks by one side induce counterattacks by the other. Yet most research on the interactive nature of negative campaigning is limited to two-party competition and provides little theoretical justification for why political actors should respond to attacks with counterattacks. The present paper addresses these research gaps. We argue that the negativity bias in human information processing and the zero-sum nature of elections make retaliation a rational strategy. Importantly, these arguments also imply that retaliation may not be the only plausible response to attacks in multiparty systems. Rather, parties may prefer to react to attacks from one competitor by attacking another. To grasp empirically how being attacked and attacking are related, we conduct a highly disaggregated time series analysis of such instances while controlling for other factors that may influence actor behavior. Our analyses draw on several thousand party press releases issued during three national election campaigns in Austria, a typical European multiparty system. They show that retaliation is an important strategy also in multiparty politics. Yet in such context, parties do not exclusively follow a tit-for-tat approach but rather display more complex patterns of attack behavior.

RIGHTS, RULES, AND DEMOCRACY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Richard S. Kay, University of Connecticut-School of Law, Estados Unidos

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract: Democracy require protection of certain fundamental rights, but can we expect courts to follow rules? There seems little escape from the proposition that substantive constitutional review by an unelected judiciary is a presumptive abridgement of democratic decision-making. Once we have accepted the proposition that there exist human rights that ought to be protected, this should hardly surprise us. No one thinks courts are perfect translators of the rules invoked before them on every occasion. But it is equally clear that rules sometimes do decide cases. In modern legal systems the relative roles of courts and legislators with respect to the rules of the system is a commonplace. Legislatures make rules. Courts apply them in particular disputes. When we are talking about human rights, however, that assumption must be clarified in at least one way. The defense of the practice of constitutional review in this article assumes courts can and do enforce rules. This article also makes clear what is the meaning of “following rules”. Preference for judicial over legislative interpretation of rights, therefore, seems to hang on the question of whether or not judges are capable of subordinating their own judgment to that incorporated in the rules by their makers. This article maintains that, in general, entrenched constitutional rules (and not just constitutional courts can and do constrain public conduct and protect human rights. The article concludes that the value judgments will depend on our estimate of the benefits we derive from the process of representative self-government. Against those benefits we will have to measure the importance we place on being able to live our lives with the security created by a regime of human rights protected by the rule of law. Keywords: Democracy. Human Rights. Rules. Judicial Review.

Deliberative Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Kasper Møller

Deliberative democracy is the current Buzz-word in contemporary democratic thinking. However deliberative democracy is deeply rooted in the republican tradition of democracy.  Nevertheless these democratic roots are often forgotten when researchers "jump on the bandwagon". This paper will shows how...... deliberation appear within the writing of five important political thinkers within the republican tradition of democracy. Secondly it will investigate the rise of deliberative democracy and explain why the deliberative turn suddenly occurred. However, first a brief general account of deliberative democracy...... is presented in order to outline the focus of deliberative democracy....

Catholic Modernity and the Italian Constitution

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomassen, Bjørn; Forlenza, Rosario

2016-01-01

and give direction to the very idea of political modernity, bridging a positive encounter between Catholicism, democracy, and freedom. The specific argument is embedded within a larger aim to recognize attempts within Catholic philosophy and political thought to articulate a trajectory that moved away from......This article analyzes the Catholic contribution to the Italian republican and democratic Constitution of 1948. The focus is on the specific way in which the Italian citizen became symbolically coded as a ‘person’ and not as an ‘individual’, inspired by Catholic social philosophy. The Catholic...... project for the new Constitution had a considerable impact on modern Italian culture and politics and on the building of a modern mass democracy and welfare state. During the crucial historical juncture that followed the collapse of Fascism, Catholic politicians and intellectuals sought to interpret...

Kant, Freedom as Independence, and Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rostbøll, Christian F.

2016-01-01

While the influence of Kant’s practical philosophy on contemporary political theory has been profound, it has its source in Kant’s autonomy-based moral philosophy rather than in his freedom-based philosophy of Right. Kant scholars have increasingly turned their attention to Kant’s Rechtslehre......, but they have largely ignored its potential contribution to discussions of democracy. However, Kant’s approach to political philosophy can supply unique insights to the latter. His notion that freedom and the public legal order are co-constitutive can be developed into a freedom argument for constitutional...

Multiparty hierarchical quantum-information splitting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Xinwen; Zhang Dengyu; Tang Shiqing; Xie Lijun

2011-01-01

We propose a scheme for multiparty hierarchical quantum-information splitting (QIS) with a multipartite entangled state, where a boss distributes a secret quantum state to two grades of agents asymmetrically. The agents who belong to different grades have different authorities for recovering the boss's secret. Except for the boss's Bell-state measurement, no nonlocal operation is involved. The presented scheme is also shown to be secure against eavesdropping. Such a hierarchical QIS is expected to find useful applications in the field of modern multipartite quantum cryptography.

Enhancing robustness of multiparty quantum correlations using weak measurement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Singh, Uttam; Mishra, Utkarsh; Dhar, Himadri Shekhar

2014-01-01

Multipartite quantum correlations are important resources for the development of quantum information and computation protocols. However, the resourcefulness of multipartite quantum correlations in practical settings is limited by its fragility under decoherence due to environmental interactions. Though there exist protocols to protect bipartite entanglement under decoherence, the implementation of such protocols for multipartite quantum correlations has not been sufficiently explored. Here, we study the effect of local amplitude damping channel on the generalized Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state, and use a protocol of optimal reversal quantum weak measurement to protect the multipartite quantum correlations. We observe that the weak measurement reversal protocol enhances the robustness of multipartite quantum correlations. Further it increases the critical damping value that corresponds to entanglement sudden death. To emphasize the efficacy of the technique in protection of multipartite quantum correlation, we investigate two proximately related quantum communication tasks, namely, quantum teleportation in a one sender, many receivers setting and multiparty quantum information splitting, through a local amplitude damping channel. We observe an increase in the average fidelity of both the quantum communication tasks under the weak measurement reversal protocol. The method may prove beneficial, for combating external interactions, in other quantum information tasks using multipartite resources. - Highlights: • Extension of weak measurement reversal scheme to protect multiparty quantum correlations. • Protection of multiparty quantum correlation under local amplitude damping noise. • Enhanced fidelity of quantum teleportation in one sender and many receivers setting. • Enhanced fidelity of quantum information splitting protocol

Enhancing robustness of multiparty quantum correlations using weak measurement

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Singh, Uttam, E-mail: uttamsingh@hri.res.in [Quantum Information and Computation Group, Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211 019 (India); Mishra, Utkarsh, E-mail: utkarsh@hri.res.in [Quantum Information and Computation Group, Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211 019 (India); Dhar, Himadri Shekhar, E-mail: dhar.himadri@gmail.com [School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067 (India)

2014-11-15

Multipartite quantum correlations are important resources for the development of quantum information and computation protocols. However, the resourcefulness of multipartite quantum correlations in practical settings is limited by its fragility under decoherence due to environmental interactions. Though there exist protocols to protect bipartite entanglement under decoherence, the implementation of such protocols for multipartite quantum correlations has not been sufficiently explored. Here, we study the effect of local amplitude damping channel on the generalized Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state, and use a protocol of optimal reversal quantum weak measurement to protect the multipartite quantum correlations. We observe that the weak measurement reversal protocol enhances the robustness of multipartite quantum correlations. Further it increases the critical damping value that corresponds to entanglement sudden death. To emphasize the efficacy of the technique in protection of multipartite quantum correlation, we investigate two proximately related quantum communication tasks, namely, quantum teleportation in a one sender, many receivers setting and multiparty quantum information splitting, through a local amplitude damping channel. We observe an increase in the average fidelity of both the quantum communication tasks under the weak measurement reversal protocol. The method may prove beneficial, for combating external interactions, in other quantum information tasks using multipartite resources. - Highlights: • Extension of weak measurement reversal scheme to protect multiparty quantum correlations. • Protection of multiparty quantum correlation under local amplitude damping noise. • Enhanced fidelity of quantum teleportation in one sender and many receivers setting. • Enhanced fidelity of quantum information splitting protocol.

Multi-party quantum key agreement with five-qubit brown states

Science.gov (United States)

Cai, Tao; Jiang, Min; Cao, Gang

2018-05-01

In this paper, we propose a multi-party quantum key agreement protocol with five-qubit brown states and single-qubit measurements. Our multi-party protocol ensures each participant to contribute equally to the agreement key. Each party performs three single-qubit unitary operations on three qubits of each brown state. Finally, by measuring brown states and decoding the measurement results, all participants can negotiate a shared secret key without classical bits exchange between them. With the analysis of security, our protocol demonstrates that it can resist against both outsider and participant attacks. Compared with other schemes, it also possesses a higher information efficiency. In terms of physical operation, it requires single-qubit measurements only which weakens the hardware requirements of participant and has a better operating flexibility.

Nuclear phase-out a part of the German Constitution? On the political grammar of constitutional changes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gaerditz, Klaus Ferdinand

2016-01-01

The study examines whether and to what extent the simple legal effected nuclear phase-out could be safeguarded in the Basic Law, which regulatory methods would be available, the advantages and disadvantages of these and how their effects would be assessed. In addition to political and practical consequences, this also includes considerations of democracy and constitutional theory in an overall consideration, which ultimately touches the question of the regulatory function of constitutional changes. [de

Democratic Chaos: How Taiwanese Democracy Destabilized Cross-Strait Relations

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Newberry, David A

2005-01-01

Since 1988, democracy in Taiwan has evolved and developed a great deal. Experts argue whether this growth constitutes "democratic consolidation" but there is no contention of the idea that the ROC is more democratic now versus pre-1988...

The role of the Courts sustaining democracy: An approach from transitional regimes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vicente F. Benítez R.

2016-06-01

Full Text Available This article explores the political factors that enable or prevent the consolidation of an effective judicial review in transitional democracies such as the Colombian and the Venezuelan ones. These democracies, in turn, are likely to be victims of abusive constitutionalism attempts by powerful executives, which is a phenomenon typical of young democracies. This paper analyzes key cases of successful and unsuccessful experiences in Central Europe, Asia and Latin America in order to identify what kind of factors allow or hinder a Tribunal’s effective judicial review in new democracies. I argue that factors as judicial independence, separation of powers, Courts’ reputation, and judicial deference to other branches, are key elements to determine whether a Tribunal will be a successful institution.

Cidadania e democracia Citizenship and democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Victoria de Mesquita Benevides

1994-08-01

Full Text Available Discute-se a importância da implementação dos mecanismos de democracia direta previstos na Constituição de 1988. O referendo, o plebiscito e a iniciativa popular, como formas de participação política que complementem os mecanismos de democracia representativa, podem contribuir significativamente para a educação política dos cidadãos.The significance of putting into effect the procedures of direct democracy recognized by the Brazilian Constitution of 1988 is discussed. An important contribution to the political education of the citizens can be given by devices like the referendum, the plebiscite and the legislative initiative, provided they are seen as complements for representative democracy.

Multiparty quantum secret sharing of classical messages based on entanglement swapping

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Zhanjun; Man Zhongxiao

2005-01-01

A multiparty quantum secret sharing (QSS) protocol of classical messages (i.e., classical bits) is proposed by using swapping quantum entanglement of Bell states. The secret messages are imposed on Bell states by local unitary operations. The secret messages are split into several parts, and each part is distributed to a separate party so that no action of a subset of all the parties without the cooperation of the entire group is able to read out the secret messages. In addition, dense coding is used in this protocol to achieve a high efficiency. The security of the present multiparty QSS against eavesdropping has been analyzed and confirmed even in a noisy quantum channel

Mitigated Democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Doomen, J.

2016-01-01

Militant democracy is an attempt to defend democracy against totalitarian parties that would use democratic procedures to rise to power. This article is focused on the consistency of the concept of 'militant democracy'. I argue that what militant democracy defends is not the democratic procedure

Constructing (IlLegitimate Democracy: Populism and Power Concentration in Newspaper Discourse on Venezuela

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ernesto Abalo

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (illegitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis, this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the hegemonic global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two main findings about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (illegitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this sense, such constructions serve to denounce potential governmental power abuses but also to legitimize the hegemonic economic and political orders.

Parliamentary democracy and pluralist society; Parlamentarische Demokratie und pluralistische Gesellschaft

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Schneider, Horst

2010-10-15

The Federal Republic of Germany is a democracy: The people expresses its political will in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections, in this way appointing its representatives at federal, state and local levels. The persons elected assemble in parliaments, deciding mainly on laws (legislative). Majorities are opposed to minorities in this process, the former constituting and supporting a government while the latter, as the opposition, exercise parliamentary control over the former. The political structure of a parliamentary democracy is matched by society, which continuously forms its political opinions and is able also to express them. In addition, the media exercise both political control and the function of forming public opinion. These personal and societal freedoms of action and expression are effective in a pluralist society not bound by one standard opinion and able to re-form itself continuously. The rights set out in the Basic Law and the structures in place constitute a balanced framework for political and societal reality. In what way this framework is filled depends decisively on political culture in general and on the political style of personal contact in individual cases. The past few months, and their debate about operating life extensions for the nuclear power plants in Germany, can be judged in the light of both the constitutional structure of a parliamentary democracy and the political style and political culture in our pluralist society. Intellectual objectivity has never harmed a society, while a loss of political culture can quickly lead to instabilities and political decisions with negative consequences for the future. (Constitutional) law alone is not always able to direct this development in a positive sense. (orig.)

Philosophy of democracy and Principles of Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jarmila Chovancová

2016-07-01

Full Text Available As the title of suggests the article deals with the problems of democracy, its philosophy and also dominant principles. The author reflects interpretation of democracy on the society with their different understand.             Democracy represents a form of government, a way of political life where these principles are put into practice.             Democracy and its separate principles are expressed in the ultimate legal rules in the democratic countries. Principle of participation as a democratic principle rests with the fact that citizens have right to participate in state administration either directly or via their elected representatives. This principle also ensures that citizens participating in state administration enjoy equal basic rights and liberties and also guarantees that no person can be excluded from participation in state administration or from access to elected or other posts.             Methodology: In the article I using method of analyze - I analyzing dominant problems of democracy-its principles in democratic countries. Another method is comparation- understanding democracy from historical aspect. And the end I also using method of synthesis-explanation democracy understand today.

Law, Democracy & Development - Vol 12, No 2 (2008)

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The Constitutional state in the developing world in the age of globalisation: from limited government to minimum democracy · EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT EMAIL FREE FULL TEXT · DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT. NL Mahao, 1-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ldd.v12i2.52890 ...

Asynchronous Multi-Party Computation with Quadratic Communication

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hirt, Martin; Nielsen, Jesper Buus; Przydatek, Bartosz

2008-01-01

We present an efficient protocol for secure multi-party computation in the asynchronous model with optimal resilience. For n parties, up to t < n/3 of them being corrupted, and security parameter κ, a circuit with c gates can be securely computed with communication complexity O(cn^2k) bits, which...... circuit randomization due to Beaver (Crypto’91), and an abstraction of certificates, which can be of independent interest....

Multi-party quantum key agreement protocol secure against collusion attacks

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Ping; Sun, Zhiwei; Sun, Xiaoqiang

2017-07-01

The fairness of a secure multi-party quantum key agreement (MQKA) protocol requires that all involved parties are entirely peer entities and can equally influence the outcome of the protocol to establish a shared key wherein no one can decide the shared key alone. However, it is found that parts of the existing MQKA protocols are sensitive to collusion attacks, i.e., some of the dishonest participants can collaborate to predetermine the final key without being detected. In this paper, a multi-party QKA protocol resisting collusion attacks is proposed. Different from previous QKA protocol resisting N-1 coconspirators or resisting 1 coconspirators, we investigate the general circle-type MQKA protocol which can be secure against t dishonest participants' cooperation. Here, t < N. We hope the results of the presented paper will be helpful for further research on fair MQKA protocols.

Forbidden regimes in the distribution of bipartite quantum correlations due to multiparty entanglement

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Asutosh; Dhar, Himadri Shekhar; Prabhu, R.; Sen(De), Aditi; Sen, Ujjwal

2017-05-01

Monogamy is a nonclassical property that limits the distribution of quantum correlation among subparts of a multiparty system. We show that monogamy scores for different quantum correlation measures are bounded above by functions of genuine multipartite entanglement for a large majority of pure multiqubit states. The bound is universal for all three-qubit pure states. We derive necessary conditions to characterize the states that violate the bound, which can also be observed by numerical simulation for a small set of states, generated Haar uniformly. The results indicate that genuine multipartite entanglement restricts the distribution of bipartite quantum correlations in a multiparty system.

Government and Ethics: The Constitutional Foundation.

Science.gov (United States)

Rossum, Ralph A.

1984-01-01

Government and ethics teachers should educate students in the "wholesale sanity" of American democracy. In particular they should (1) identify and defend the principles of the American constitutional order, (2) criticize government actions departing from these principles, and (3) seek means by which to correct for these departures. (RM)

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, reproductive freedom, and deliberative democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Farrelly, Colin

2009-04-01

In this paper I argue that the account of deliberative democracy advanced by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (1996, 2004) is a useful normative theory that can help enhance our deliberations about public policy in morally pluralistic societies. More specifically, I illustrate how the prescriptions of deliberative democracy can be applied to the issue of regulating non-medical uses of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), such as gender selection. Deliberative democracy does not aim to win a philosophical debate among rival first-order theories, such as libertarianism, egalitarianism or feminism. Rather, it advances a second-order analysis that strives to help us determine what would constitute a reasonable balance between the conflicting fundamental values that arise in the context of regulating PGD. I outline a theoretical model (called the Reasonable Genetic Intervention Model) that brings these issues to the fore. Such a model incorporates the concern for both procedural and substantive principles; and it does so in way that takes provisionality seriously.

Scalable and Unconditionally Secure Multiparty Computation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Nielsen, Jesper Buus

2007-01-01

We present a multiparty computation protocol that is unconditionally secure against adaptive and active adversaries, with communication complexity O(Cn)k+O(Dn^2)k+poly(nk), where C is the number of gates in the circuit, n is the number of parties, k is the bit-length of the elements of the field...... over which the computation is carried out, D is the multiplicative depth of the circuit, and κ is the security parameter. The corruption threshold is t passive security the corruption threshold is t 

Participatory Publics - Examples from Higher Education in Fragile Democracies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zander, Pär-Ola

This paper presents two cases of local communities, defined by being constituted by students in higher education in polities that have a relatively short tradition of democracy. The first case is a college in Bhutan. The second example is a Madrasa in Bangladesh, a privately run institution...

Scalable Multiparty Computation with Nearly Optimal Work and Resilience

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Krøigaard, Mikkel; Ishai, Yuval

2008-01-01

We present the first general protocol for secure multiparty computation in which the total amount of work required by n players to compute a function f grows only polylogarithmically with n (ignoring an additive term that depends on n but not on the complexity of f). Moreover, the protocol is also...

Democracy and Governance in Nigeria's Fourth Republic | Oke ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

on the principle of the rule of law and constitutionalism is capable of ushering in good governance and societal development. It is equally believed that democracy conforms to the principle of justice, equity and fair-play as a democratic state is based on consent and popular participation. However, since the inception of the ...

CERTIFICATE REVOCATION SCHEME BASED ON WEIGHTED VOTING GAME AND RATIONAL SECURE MULTIPARTY COMPUTING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

N Aravinthan

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The Mobile Adhoc Network consists of deployed mobile nodes which lead to the frequent changes in network topology. Due to topology changes, required infrastructure is unavailable for communication. Moreover, malicious nodes present in MANET make use of this modification and can easily launch highly vulnerable attacks on the routing path of the network. Hence, Security issue such as removing misbehaving nodes is the primary issue in MANET. Effective certificate revocation scheme was introduced to identify and eliminate the node with malicious activities in the network based on the weighted voting game (ECR-WVG approach. In this approach, weights and quota were two factors, determined for an effective revocation of malicious nodes certificates. However, security during multiparty transmission was not taken into account in ECR-WVG. In Effective Certificate Revocation Scheme based on Weighted Voting Game and Rational Secure Multi-Party Computing (ECR-WVG-RSMPC method, rational secret sharing scheme is introduced along with ECR-WVG approach for securing multiparty transmission. Performance evaluation can be done between ECR-WVG and ECR-WVG-RSMPC in terms of false revocation, malicious node revocation, normalized time for revocation and revocation accuracy ratio.

Democracy and Representation in Paraguay

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Liliana Rocío Duarte-Recalde

2017-05-01

Full Text Available This article reviews the electoral accountability dimension as a constitutive mechanism of Paraguayan democracy since 1989, analyzing the factors that limit the representation contained in the administration of the Paraguayan government as a result of the electoral process. We provide an analytic contrast between the democratic principles that guide the Paraguayan electoral institutions and the way their designs are enforced, identifying the gap between formal and informal rules as determinants of political representation. We also describe the barriers that prevent effective access of the population to political participation and competition, the advantages possessed by traditional political parties and interest groups, as well as their implications for democracy. We also review the degree to which elected officials are representative of historically excluded social groups as a result, emphasizing the way women, indigenous and peasant communities have potentially limited power to exercise political influence due to limitations to participation by structural and institutional factors.

Democracy, Resistance, and the Practice of Literature: Introduction

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Arka Chattopadhyay

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Recent world politics has witnessed the rise of a certain style of authoritarianism. It can be roughly characterized with a cult of masculine leadership, a popular rhetoric of foreign investment and development, and a phobia of the illegal immigrant made into an ethical obligation. These contradictory forms of politics – the paean to multinational corporations, free trade, and the ‘bloc’-ing of power and the simultaneous mobilization of hyper-nationalism in the form of censoring books and throttling subversive aesthetic practices – characterize the conception and practice of what may be called “authoritarian democracy.” Considering the democratically elected basis of this authoritarianism, it becomes all the more important to ask if democracy paves the way for it. In that case, where do we locate democracy today? Is it right to say that the real democratic space unfolds itself in people’s movements and not in the electoral process? If this is the case, a radical conception of democracy would have to account for a shift of emphasis from the locus of governance to that of resistance and co-option. Historically speaking, democracy may not always be the means but it has been one of the ends for the various acts of resistance such as the working class, anti-colonial, nationalist, feminist, LGBT, or constitutional multiculturalism. In our sour and hungry times, when state aggression is overpowering the geographical marking (Russia’s in Ukraine or Israel’s in Palestine, or strangling the voice of internal resistance (North Eastern regions in India, not to mention religious fundamentalism, we need to rethink the old questions of democracy and resistance. With the ISIS, Boko Haram or the Taliban practice, we have seen how resistance itself can produce a dangerous authoritarianism which further complicates the relations between democracy, authoritarianism, and resistance. How do we historicize and ethically theorize resistance in

Multiparty symmetric sum types

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Lasse; Yoshida, Nobuko; Honda, Kohei

2010-01-01

This paper introduces a new theory of multiparty session types based on symmetric sum types, by which we can type non-deterministic orchestration choice behaviours. While the original branching type in session types can represent a choice made by a single participant and accepted by others...... determining how the session proceeds, the symmetric sum type represents a choice made by agreement among all the participants of a session. Such behaviour can be found in many practical systems, including collaborative workflow in healthcare systems for clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). Processes...... with the symmetric sums can be embedded into the original branching types using conductor processes. We show that this type-driven embedding preserves typability, satisfies semantic soundness and completeness, and meets the encodability criteria adapted to the typed setting. The theory leads to an efficient...

Democracy and shareholder's participation

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Radulović Vuk

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Democracy and participation of shareholders or the demand for their active participation in the meetings of the Assemblyhas increasingly gained in importance in modern conditions. This is because, negative trends of passivation, the limitations of democratic potential of shareholders and shareholders' rights abuse by the management body, especially in the work control and compensation policy of shareholders, have been observed in a detailed analysis of the application and results of the Shareholder Rights Directive. The passivity of shareholders, as one of the most striking features of their position in the joint stock company today, is the biggest problem and threat to democratic processes within the company. If we bear in mind that the most common definition of shareholder democracy is 'ability of shareholders to influence the management of the company', we can notice a clear picture of the seriousness and importance of the lack of shareholder participation. This is the reason why the author of this paper gradually examines the causes and consequences of the passivity of shareholders, the proposed changes in this context in the Law of the European Union and the practical implications of such solutions in practice. In addition, the author examines contemporary forms and conditions for shareholder democracy and the legal framework in the European Union and the Republic of Serbia. In this way, we analyze the situation in this area and point out shortcomings of certain solutions, as well as the implications they cause in practice. The main thesis from which starts the scientific work and which will be gradually proven through theoretical and practical analysis is that the wider social processes directly reflect on the state of the joint-stock companies, or the state of corporate governance. This means that the negative trends of modern democracy (in the constitutional sense are almost mirrored in economic capital (EC and our attempt in this paper

Direct Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Beramendi, Virginia; Ellis, Andrew; Kaufman, Bruno

While many books on direct democracy have a regional or national approach, or simply focus on one of the many mechanisms associated with direct democracy, this Handbook delves into a global comparison of direct democracy mechanisms, including referendums, citizens' initiatives, agenda initiatives...... learned. In addition, the uniquely comprehensive world survey outlines direct democracy provisions in 214 countries and territories and indicates which, if any, of these provisions are used by each country or territory at both the national and sub-national levels. Furthermore, the world survey includes...

Multiparty secret sharing of quantum information based on entanglement swapping

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Yongmin; Zhang Kuanshou; Peng Kunchi

2004-01-01

A protocol of multiparty secret sharing of quantum information based on entanglement swapping is analyzed. In this protocol, Bell states are needed in order to realize the quantum information secret sharing and it is convenient to realize the quantum secret sharing among the members of any subset of users

Multiparty quantum secret sharing based on GHZ states

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hwang, Tzonelih; Hwang, Cheng-Chieh [Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701 Taiwan (China); Li, Chuan-Ming, E-mail: hwangtl@ismail.csie.ncku.edu.tw [Department of Information Management, Shu-Zen College of Medicine and Management, Kaohsiung, 821 Taiwan (China)

2011-04-15

Gao (2009 Commun. Theor. Phys. 52 421-4) has proposed an efficient multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) with two-photon three-dimensional Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs. This work shows that a similar idea can also be used to construct an MQSS using the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Compared to other MQSSs using GHZ-related states, the newly proposed protocol is more efficient in the aspect of qubit utilization.

Designing For Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Knutz, Eva; Markussen, Thomas; Mårbjerg Thomsen, Signe

2014-01-01

there are already a number of approaches available which in one way or the other address the relationship between design, democracy and power. We provide an account of participatory design, adversarial design and design activism thereby pointing towards design?s potential for re-distributing power and authority......n this paper we focus on ?patient-democracy? and ?shared decision-making? seen from the perspective of design practice and design research. In the research on democracy in healthcare it is rarely questioned what forms of democracy underlies these concepts. We have examined three different theories...... of democracy and the democratic practices that belong to each of these. For designers working to increase patient democracy it is of vital importance to be able to distinguish different structures underlying democratic practices and to work out methods for prototyping democracy. In design research...

Taiwan’s Democracy: Towards a Liberal Democracy or Authoritarianism?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dafydd J. Fell

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This paper examines how Taiwan moved from being viewed as a model Asian democracy to one allegedly suffering from democratic reversal. The reasons for the declining domestic and international reputation of Taiwan’s democracy are discussed. Lastly, some key political challenges facing Taiwan’s democracy are outlined.

Democracia constitucional cosmopolita, federalismo y esfera pública en el iuspositivismo constitucionalista de Luigi Ferrajoli || Cosmopolitan Constitutional Democracy, Federalism and Public Sphere in the Constitutional Iuspositivisim of Luigi Ferrajoli

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joan Alfred Martínez i Seguí

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Resumen: El escrito se acerca al bien trabado iuspositivismo constitucionalista de Luigi Ferrajoli haciendo hincapié en la propuesta normativa que, a modo de colofón de su teoría sobre el derecho y la democracia, pretende extender su modelo de democracia garantista del marco del Estado al de la actual sociedad internacional globalizada mediante un federalismo en red regido por el principio de subsidiariedad, el cual debería priorizar las instituciones de garantía de los derechos a nivel supranacional y las instituciones de gobierno a nivel local y estatal. Asimismo, en aras de un perfeccionamiento de este modelo de democracia constitucional cosmopolita, se critica el caduco formalismo jurídico que le sirve de método y sus consecuencias derivadas: relativismo ético y negación de la universalidad moral de los derechos humanos, restricción de la esfera pública al ámbito jurídico-institucional, falta de profundización en el federalismo como teoría política… Por último, se destaca la alternativa de una razón práctica amplia y unitaria como instrumento de superación de los déficits señalados.Abstract: This paper deals with the constitutionalist iuspositivism of Luigi Ferrajoli. It emphasizes the rule proposed which, as the culmination of his theory about law and democracy, pretends to spread his canon of democracy from the frame of government to the present international society globalized through a federalism which is determined by the principle of subsidiarity. This organizing principle should give priority to the institutions guaranteeing the rights at supranational level and to the government institutions at local and state level. Likewise, on the way to the improvement of this constitutional and cosmopolite democracy canon, the legal formalism is criticized because of its caducity but, at the same time, it is used by this canon as a method that derives consequences: ethical relativism and negation of the moral universality

Democracia constitucional cosmopolita, federalismo y esfera pública en el iuspositivismo constitucionalista de Luigi Ferrajoli || Cosmopolitan Constitutional Democracy, Federalism and Public Sphere in the Constitutional Iuspositivisim of Luigi Ferrajoli

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joan Alfred Martínez i Seguí

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Resumen: El escrito se acerca al bien trabado iuspositivismo constitucionalista de Luigi Ferrajoli haciendo hincapié en la propuesta normativa que, a modo de colofón de su teoría sobre el derecho y la democracia, pretende extender su modelo de democracia garantista del marco del Estado al de la actual sociedad internacional globalizada mediante un federalismo en red regido por el principio de subsidiariedad, el cual debería priorizar las instituciones de garantía de los derechos a nivel supranacional y las instituciones de gobierno a nivel local y estatal. Asimismo, en aras de un perfeccionamiento de este modelo de democracia constitucional cosmopolita, se critica el caduco formalismo jurídico que le sirve de método y sus consecuencias derivadas: relativismo ético y negación de la universalidad moral de los derechos humanos, restricción de la esfera pública al ámbito jurídico-institucional, falta de profundización en el federalismo como teoría política… Por último, se destaca la alternativa de una razón práctica amplia y unitaria como instrumento de superación de los déficits señalados. Abstract: This paper deals with the constitutionalist iuspositivism of Luigi Ferrajoli. It emphasizes the rule proposed which, as the culmination of his theory about law and democracy, pretends to spread his canon of democracy from the frame of government to the present international society globalized through a federalism which is determined by the principle of subsidiarity. This organizing principle should give priority to the institutions guaranteeing the rights at supranational level and to the government institutions at local and state level. Likewise, on the way to the improvement of this constitutional and cosmopolite democracy canon, the legal formalism is criticized because of its caducity but, at the same time, it is used by this canon as a method that derives consequences: ethical relativism and negation of the moral

Issues of Political Development: Fragile Democracies in Latin America

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Armando Albuquerque

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The political development, as research field, had its origins in the second half of the last century. From the 60s, when he began to flourish, now constitutes a conceptual border with comparative politics. In subsequent decades there were many advances in the analysis of problems related to the political institutions, state structures, the rule of law, civil society, stability and crises of democratic regimes, among others. From this issue, will be made to this article, supported by the Democracy Index, analyzing the causes of one of the main shortcomings of the political development in Latin America, namely, the low quality of their democracies and the consequent non-consolidation of the same.

Novel Multi-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol with G-Like States and Bell States

Science.gov (United States)

Min, Shi-Qi; Chen, Hua-Ying; Gong, Li-Hua

2018-06-01

A significant aspect of quantum cryptography is quantum key agreement (QKA), which ensures the security of key agreement protocols by quantum information theory. The fairness of an absolute security multi-party quantum key agreement (MQKA) protocol demands that all participants can affect the protocol result equally so as to establish a shared key and that nobody can determine the shared key by himself/herself. We found that it is difficult for the existing multi-party quantum key agreement protocol to withstand the collusion attacks. Put differently, it is possible for several cooperated and untruthful participants to determine the final key without being detected. To address this issue, based on the entanglement swapping between G-like state and Bell states, a new multi-party quantum key agreement protocol is put forward. The proposed protocol makes full use of EPR pairs as quantum resources, and adopts Bell measurement and unitary operation to share a secret key. Besides, the proposed protocol is fair, secure and efficient without involving a third party quantum center. It demonstrates that the protocol is capable of protecting users' privacy and meeting the requirement of fairness. Moreover, it is feasible to carry out the protocol with existing technologies.

Novel Multi-Party Quantum Key Agreement Protocol with G-Like States and Bell States

Science.gov (United States)

Min, Shi-Qi; Chen, Hua-Ying; Gong, Li-Hua

2018-03-01

A significant aspect of quantum cryptography is quantum key agreement (QKA), which ensures the security of key agreement protocols by quantum information theory. The fairness of an absolute security multi-party quantum key agreement (MQKA) protocol demands that all participants can affect the protocol result equally so as to establish a shared key and that nobody can determine the shared key by himself/herself. We found that it is difficult for the existing multi-party quantum key agreement protocol to withstand the collusion attacks. Put differently, it is possible for several cooperated and untruthful participants to determine the final key without being detected. To address this issue, based on the entanglement swapping between G-like state and Bell states, a new multi-party quantum key agreement protocol is put forward. The proposed protocol makes full use of EPR pairs as quantum resources, and adopts Bell measurement and unitary operation to share a secret key. Besides, the proposed protocol is fair, secure and efficient without involving a third party quantum center. It demonstrates that the protocol is capable of protecting users' privacy and meeting the requirement of fairness. Moreover, it is feasible to carry out the protocol with existing technologies.

State, nation and democracy on the 21st century

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nidia Catherine González Piñeros

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This article analyzes the relationship between State and Nation in the recent events in Japan and Bolivia, cases in which the universally shared ideas about development and democracy are met with the common criteria for the majority of the countries in the world. This relationship is analyzed comparing the particularities of each context regarding the concepts mentioned. Japan, despite being considered as an economically developed country, is criticized for its lack of exercise of democratic, popular politics. That country, despite being in the 21st century, remains a constitutional monarchy. Thus, given the catastrophic episode from March, 2011, the destiny of the citizens was defined by the imperial family. Bolivia, for its part, since the beginning of this century has managed a national reconstruction that has re-founded the Constitution and, therefore, the nation and the State. However, this democratic reorganization now faces a number of dilemmas where the State is debating between democracy and authoritarianism, as well as between liberal development and development from a communal perspective.

Democracy and Sense

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Bent Erik

Democracy and sense questions practically all that happens in society today. Its aim is to raise a debate on the most urgent problems of economy, democracy, sustainable conduct and the framework for industry and business. A number of untraditional solutions are suggested, but without support...... to either rightwing or leftwing politics. In fact, one of the key points is that political parties have reduced democracy to one day of voting followed by four years of oligarchy. To regain a functioning democracy we must strengthen direct democracy and make the distance between population and government...

Does the digital age require new models of democracy? : lasswell's policy scientist of democracy vs. Liquid democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jelena Gregorius

2015-01-01

This essay provides a debate about Lasswell’s policy scientist of democracy (PSOD, 1948) in comparison to the model of liquid democracy (21st century) based on the question if the digital age requires new models of democracy. The PSOD of Lasswell, a disciplinary persona, is in favour of an elitist

Secure multiparty computation with a dishonest majority via quantum means

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Loukopoulos, Klearchos; Browne, Daniel E.

2010-01-01

We introduce a scheme for secure multiparty computation utilizing the quantum correlations of entangled states. First we present a scheme for two-party computation, exploiting the correlations of a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state to provide, with the help of a third party, a near-private computation scheme. We then present a variation of this scheme which is passively secure with threshold t=2, in other words, remaining secure when pairs of players conspire together provided they faithfully follow the protocol. Furthermore, we show that the passively secure variant can be modified to be secure when cheating parties are allowed to deviate from the protocol. We show that this can be generalized to computations of n-party polynomials of degree 2 with a threshold of n-1. The threshold achieved is significantly higher than the best known classical threshold, which satisfies the bound t< n/2. Our schemes, each complying with a different definition of security, shed light on which physical assumptions are necessary in order to achieve quantum secure multiparty computation.

Distribution of Bell-inequality violation versus multiparty-quantum-correlation measures

Science.gov (United States)

Sharma, Kunal; Das, Tamoghna; Sen (de), Aditi; Sen, Ujjwal

Violation of a Bell inequality guarantees the existence of quantum correlations in a shared quantum state. A pure bipartite quantum state, having nonvanishing quantum correlation, always violates a Bell inequality. Such correspondence is absent for multipartite pure quantum states in the case of multipartite correlation function Bell inequalities with two settings at each site. We establish a connection between the monogamy of Bell-inequality violation and multiparty quantum correlations for shared multisite quantum states. We believe that the relation is generic, as it is true for a number of different multisite measures that are defined from radically different perspectives. Precisely, we quantify the multisite-quantum-correlation content in the states by generalized geometric measure, a genuine multisite entanglement measure, as well as three monogamybased multiparty-quantum-correlation measures, viz., 3-tangle, quantum-discord score, and quantum-work-deficit score. We find that generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states and another single-parameter family of states, which we refer to as the special Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, have the status of extremal states in such relations.

Secure multi-party communication with quantum key distribution managed by trusted authority

Science.gov (United States)

Nordholt, Jane Elizabeth; Hughes, Richard John; Peterson, Charles Glen

2013-07-09

Techniques and tools for implementing protocols for secure multi-party communication after quantum key distribution ("QKD") are described herein. In example implementations, a trusted authority facilitates secure communication between multiple user devices. The trusted authority distributes different quantum keys by QKD under trust relationships with different users. The trusted authority determines combination keys using the quantum keys and makes the combination keys available for distribution (e.g., for non-secret distribution over a public channel). The combination keys facilitate secure communication between two user devices even in the absence of QKD between the two user devices. With the protocols, benefits of QKD are extended to multi-party communication scenarios. In addition, the protocols can retain benefit of QKD even when a trusted authority is offline or a large group seeks to establish secure communication within the group.

Secure multi-party communication with quantum key distribution managed by trusted authority

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Richard John; Nordholt, Jane Elizabeth; Peterson, Charles Glen

2017-06-14

Techniques and tools for implementing protocols for secure multi-party communication after quantum key distribution ("QKD") are described herein. In example implementations, a trusted authority facilitates secure communication between multiple user devices. The trusted authority distributes different quantum keys by QKD under trust relationships with different users. The trusted authority determines combination keys using the quantum keys and makes the combination keys available for distribution (e.g., for non-secret distribution over a public channel). The combination keys facilitate secure communication between two user devices even in the absence of QKD between the two user devices. With the protocols, benefits of QKD are extended to multi-party communication scenarios. In addition, the protocols can retain benefit of QKD even when a trusted authority is offline or a large group seeks to establish secure communication within the group.

Enabling analytics on sensitive medical data with secure multi-party computation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M. Veeningen (Meilof); S. Chatterjea (Supriyo); A.Z. Horváth (Anna Zsófia); G. Spindler (Gerald); E. Boersma (Eric); P. van der Spek (Peter); O. van der Galiën (Onno); J. Gutteling (Job); W. Kraaij (Wessel); P.J.M. Veugen (Thijs)

2018-01-01

textabstractWhile there is a clear need to apply data analytics in the healthcare sector, this is often difficult because it requires combining sensitive data from multiple data sources. In this paper, we show how the cryptographic technique of secure multiparty computation can enable such data

Robustness of multiparty nonlocality to local decoherence

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jang, Sung Soon; Cheong, Yong Wook; Kim, Jaewan; Lee, Hai-Woong

2006-01-01

We investigate the robustness of multiparty nonlocality under local decoherence, acting independently and equally on each subsystem. To be specific, we consider an N-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state under a depolarization, dephasing, or dissipation channel, and examine nonlocality by testing violation of the Mermin-Klyshko inequality, which is one of Bell's inequalities for multiqubit systems. The results show that the robustness of nonlocality increases with the number of qubits, and that the nonlocality of an N-qubit GHZ state with even N is extremely persistent against dephasing

Mapping Deviant Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Seeberg, Michael

2014-01-01

A number of countries have emerged as stable (though minimalist) democracies despite low levels of modernization, lack of democratic neighbouring countries and other factors consistently related to democratic stability in the literature. The study of these deviant democracies is a promising new...... research field but it is afflicted by a notable problem, viz. the lack of a consensus as to which countries are actually instances of deviant democracy. The present article attempts to solve this problem by carrying out a comprehensive mapping of deviant democracies. First, I review the existing literature...... to provide an overview of the cases most often identified as deviant democracies. Second, I use a large-N analysis to systematically map deviant democracies. The analysis includes 159 countries covering the time period 1993–2008. The analysis points to 12 cases that merits further attention, viz...

Retrospective Analysis of Communication Events - Understanding the Dynamics of Collaborative Multi-Party Discourse

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cowell, Andrew J.; Haack, Jereme N.; McColgin, Dave W.

2006-06-08

This research is aimed at understanding the dynamics of collaborative multi-party discourse across multiple communication modalities. Before we can truly make sig-nificant strides in devising collaborative communication systems, there is a need to understand how typical users utilize com-putationally supported communications mechanisms such as email, instant mes-saging, video conferencing, chat rooms, etc., both singularly and in conjunction with traditional means of communication such as face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and postal mail. Attempting to un-derstand an individual’s communications profile with access to only a single modal-ity is challenging at best and often futile. Here, we discuss the development of RACE – Retrospective Analysis of Com-munications Events – a test-bed prototype to investigate issues relating to multi-modal multi-party discourse.

From the Civil War to 9/11: Democracy and the Right to a Fair Trial

Science.gov (United States)

Marcus, Alan S.

2011-01-01

In the United States, the right to a fair trial is protected by the Constitution. The ideal of justice is a critical underpinning of the democracy. However, while the United States is a model of an honorable and just court system most of the time, our constitutional rights are occasionally stretched or broken. The rationale is often national…

New Constitutionalism for Biosiversity vs. Neoconstitutionalism of Risk

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michele Carducci

2016-08-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2177-7055.2016v37n73p255 Based on an “eco-systemic” democracy that seeks to preserve biodiversity through the recognition of the co-evolutionary link between nature and culture, the Andean Constitutionalism emerges as the expression of a counter-hegemonic constitutionalism committed to the construction of a new institutional framework through the inclusion of new participatory and intercultural mechanisms. Departing from western constitutional paradigms, this groundbreaking constitutionalism revisits the “Gaia hypothesis” and legitimizes a real “social contract” among the people and nature, and instead of considering it as an “object” of ownership, exploitation, or conservation, it regards nature as a legal “subject” and primary source of society itself and the Constitution as its “legal grantor and protector”.

Homegrown Democracy, Homegrown Democrats

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Norman K. Denzin

2005-02-01

Full Text Available Written on the eve of the 2004 American presidential election, this political narrative offers a critical reading of two models of democracy: Instant-Mix imperial democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb, criticized by Arundhati Roy, and Garrison Keillor’s Homegrown Democrat. Keillor’s pastoral view of democracy is anchored in LakeWobegon, his imaginary utopian community. His homegrown democracy is narrow, provincial, and White. The author concludes that he must look elsewhere for his alternative view of democracy.

Democracy in Crisis?

Science.gov (United States)

O'Neill, Brenda

2006-01-01

This article discusses the state of Canadian democracy. Although calling Canadian democracy as something to be in a crisis is still debatable, the author expresses worry over the declining turnout levels in recent elections. Canada--along with a number of other liberal democracies--has experienced a significant and consistent decline in election…

'Democracy is coming to the RSA': On democracy, theology, and futural historicity

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Robert R. Vosloo

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This article brings the concept of democracy � as an open-ended tradition � in conversation with notions dealing with historicity and the future, such as �democracy to come�, �promise�, and �a democratic vision�. It is argued that although these notions are rightfully associated with the future, they also imply that democracy should not be disconnected from an emphasis on an inheritance from the past. With this emphasis in mind, the first part of the article attends to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida�s intriguing term, �democracy to come�, whereas the second part of the article takes a closer look at some aspects of the work of the South African theologian John de Gruchy on democracy, with special reference to his distinction between a democratic system and a democratic vision. The third, and final, part of the article brings some of the insights taken from the engagement with Derrida and De Gruchy into conversation with the continuing challenges facing theological discourse on democracy in South Africa today.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: A constructive proposal is made that emphasises the futural openness of democracy in a way that challenges a vague utopianism.Keywords: Democracy; Derrida; De Gruchy; future; historicity

Secure Multiparty Computation vs. Fair Exchange - Bridging the Gap

OpenAIRE

Garbinato , Benoît; Rickebusch , Ian

2013-01-01

International audience; In this paper, we propose a comparison of fair exchange and secure multiparty computation. Despite their apparent similarity, these two problems arise respectively from the elds of distributed systems and of modern cryptography. The wide di erences of description and approach in these research elds render hazardous a straightforward comparison of the various results and solutions. By introducing a common speci cation framework for the two problems, we examine the di er...

Adaptive versus Non-Adaptive Security of Multi-Party Protocols

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Canetti, Ran; Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Dziembowski, Stefan

2004-01-01

Security analysis of multi-party cryptographic protocols distinguishes between two types of adversarial settings: In the non-adaptive setting the set of corrupted parties is chosen in advance, before the interaction begins. In the adaptive setting the adversary chooses who to corrupt during...... the course of the computation. We study the relations between adaptive security (i.e., security in the adaptive setting) and nonadaptive security, according to two definitions and in several models of computation....

Federalism and constitutional change in Nigeria

OpenAIRE

Okpanachi, Eyene; Garba, Ali

2010-01-01

In comparison with established democracies Nigeria is a highly populated and ethnic fragmented state. Therefore after colonial rule and independence a federal constitutional structure was supposed to bring the processes for conflict resolution between the ethnic groups. In 1960 Nigeria started as a highly decentralised state and went through important changes until 1999 towards greater centralisation which found its culmination in regular military governments and open conflicts. Until 1999 ea...

Globalization and democracy

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DEEPAK NAYYAR

2015-09-01

Full Text Available ABSTRACTThe gathering momentum of globalization in the world economy has coincided with the spread of political democracy across countries. Economies have become global. But politics remains national. This essay explores the relationship between globalization and democracy, which is neither linear nor characterized by structural rigidities. It seeks to analyze how globalization might constrain degrees of freedom for nation states and space for democratic politics, and how political democracy within countries might exercise some checks and balances on markets and globalization. The essential argument is that the relationship between globalization and democracy is dialectical and does not conform to ideological caricatures.

Deficient gaze pattern during virtual multiparty conversation in patients with schizophrenia.

Science.gov (United States)

Han, Kiwan; Shin, Jungeun; Yoon, Sang Young; Jang, Dong-Pyo; Kim, Jae-Jin

2014-06-01

Virtual reality has been used to measure abnormal social characteristics, particularly in one-to-one situations. In real life, however, conversations with multiple companions are common and more complicated than two-party conversations. In this study, we explored the features of social behaviors in patients with schizophrenia during virtual multiparty conversations. Twenty-three patients with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls performed the virtual three-party conversation task, which included leading and aiding avatars, positive- and negative-emotion-laden situations, and listening and speaking phases. Patients showed a significant negative correlation in the listening phase between the amount of gaze on the between-avatar space and reasoning ability, and demonstrated increased gaze on the between-avatar space in the speaking phase that was uncorrelated with attentional ability. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have active avoidance of eye contact during three-party conversations. Virtual reality may provide a useful way to measure abnormal social characteristics during multiparty conversations in schizophrenia. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Schooling for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Noddings, Nel

2011-01-01

There is a widespread movement today to prepare all students for college, and it is promoted in the name of democracy. I argue here that such a move actually puts our democracy at risk by forcing students into programs that do not interest them and depriving them of courses at which they might succeed. We risk losing the vision of democracy that…

The Crisis of Democracy in Europe: Between National State and European Governance

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Damir Grubiša

2006-01-01

Full Text Available In this article the symptoms of the crises of democracy are analyzed. The author concentrates on three sets of symptoms: fi rst, on the symptoms emerged in transition, post-communist countries that joined the EU within the Fifth enlargement. One of the main indicators of such crises is the low turnout in the European Parliament elections in 2004, only one month after their joining the EU. The reasons for such a bad turnout are the disappointment in democracy and in transition, as well as the formal fulfi llment of the Copenhagen criteria for accession. The second symptom of the crises is the negative result of the European Constitutional referenda in France and in the Netherlands, which triggered the chain reaction of rejection in other European countries and a stalemate in the ratifi cation process. The third element of the crises is the democratic defi cit in the EU and the diff erent views on how to overcome it, either by strengthening federalist elements or by the domination of intergovernmentalist procedures. In conclusion, the author agrees with Larry Siedentop that three appeals of democracy exist in today’s Europe: democracy simpliciter, democratic government appeal and the appeal of a democratic society. However, most European countries are still on the fi rst or second step, and therefore the crisis of democracy is still potentially dangerous for the future development of European societies. The victory over communism did not bring about the expected triumph of democracy, and today democracy is exposed to diff erent forms of political pathology that corroborate the delusions and failed expectations of democratization.

Efficient generation of photonic entanglement and multiparty quantum communication

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Trojek, Pavel

2007-09-15

This thesis deals largely with the problem of efficient generation of photonic entanglement with the principal aim of developing a bright source of polarization-entangled photon pairs, which meets the requirements for reliable and economic operation of quantum communication prototypes and demonstrators. Our approach uses a cor-related photon-pair emission in nonlinear process of spontaneous parametric downconversion pumped by light coming from a compact and cheap blue laser diode. Two alternative source configurations are examined within the thesis. The first makes use of a well established concept of degenerate non-collinear emission from a single type-II nonlinear crystal and the second relies on a novel method where the emissions from two adjacent type-I phase-matched nonlinear crystals operated in collinear non-degenerate regime are coherently overlapped. The latter approach showed to be more effective, yielding a total detected rate of almost 10{sup 6} pairs/s at >98% quantum interference visibility of polarization correlations. The second issue addressed within the thesis is the simplification and practical implementation of quantum-assisted solutions to multiparty communication tasks. We show that entanglement is not the only non-classical resource endowing the quantum multiparty information processing its power. Instead, only the sequential communication and transformation of a single qubit can be sufficient to accomplish certain tasks. This we prove for two distinct communication tasks, secret sharing and communication complexity. Whereas the goal of the first is to split a cryptographic key among several parties in a way that its reconstruction requires their collaboration, the latter aims at reducing the amount of communication during distributed computational tasks. Importantly, our qubitassisted solutions to the problems are feasible with state-of-the-art technology. This we clearly demonstrate in the laboratory implementation for 6 and 5 parties

Efficient generation of photonic entanglement and multiparty quantum communication

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Trojek, Pavel

2007-09-01

This thesis deals largely with the problem of efficient generation of photonic entanglement with the principal aim of developing a bright source of polarization-entangled photon pairs, which meets the requirements for reliable and economic operation of quantum communication prototypes and demonstrators. Our approach uses a cor-related photon-pair emission in nonlinear process of spontaneous parametric downconversion pumped by light coming from a compact and cheap blue laser diode. Two alternative source configurations are examined within the thesis. The first makes use of a well established concept of degenerate non-collinear emission from a single type-II nonlinear crystal and the second relies on a novel method where the emissions from two adjacent type-I phase-matched nonlinear crystals operated in collinear non-degenerate regime are coherently overlapped. The latter approach showed to be more effective, yielding a total detected rate of almost 10 6 pairs/s at >98% quantum interference visibility of polarization correlations. The second issue addressed within the thesis is the simplification and practical implementation of quantum-assisted solutions to multiparty communication tasks. We show that entanglement is not the only non-classical resource endowing the quantum multiparty information processing its power. Instead, only the sequential communication and transformation of a single qubit can be sufficient to accomplish certain tasks. This we prove for two distinct communication tasks, secret sharing and communication complexity. Whereas the goal of the first is to split a cryptographic key among several parties in a way that its reconstruction requires their collaboration, the latter aims at reducing the amount of communication during distributed computational tasks. Importantly, our qubitassisted solutions to the problems are feasible with state-of-the-art technology. This we clearly demonstrate in the laboratory implementation for 6 and 5 parties

Design of large scale applications of secure multiparty computation : secure linear programming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoogh, de S.J.A.

2012-01-01

Secure multiparty computation is a basic concept of growing interest in modern cryptography. It allows a set of mutually distrusting parties to perform a computation on their private information in such a way that as little as possible is revealed about each private input. The early results of

Typology of State Types: Persistence and Transition

Science.gov (United States)

2015-04-28

National Resistance Movement (NRM) gained power in 1996. Multiparty democracy was replaced by a „movement‟ system, which consisted of grass- roots local...councils that supposedly allowed participatory governance (BTI 2012b). The gradual spike in legitimacy seen in Figure 3 from 1996 to 2000...Affairs 37(2):125-151. Marty, Marianne. (2002) Mauritania: political parties, neo-patrimonialism and democracy . Democratization 9(3):92-108

RELIGIOUS DEMOCRATIZATION IN INDONESIA: STRENGTHENING THE PRO-CEDURAL AND SUBSTANTIAL RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY

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Eka Hendry AR.

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Inspired by the book of Michael Mann about the dark side of democracy that discusses the paradox between the ideality of democratic values and empirical realities of violence in the name of freedom (democracy, this paper begins with the exposure of the paradox, such as the rise of the violent conflict between groups of people (both ethnic and religious-based and the high prevalence of violence between religious groups in Indonesia. Even worse, a very wrenching violence involves state actors (rulers. This paper tries to understand the roots of the paradox, with a look at how the relationship between state and religion and the religious community trend of Indonesia (especially Muslims. The author argues that the democratization of religion is a solution to the issues. To answer what kind of religious democracy lives in Indonesia, the author analyzes through a religious procedural (or constitutional democratic dimension and religious substantial democratic dimension. The phenomenon of disobedience of law and system and the euphoria of law-making that reflects “intolerance” in several places in Indonesia display the fundamental issue in the religious procedural democracy. Whereas in the context of religious substantial democracy, the prevailing trend of religion that serves as a political and economic vehicle and ignores religion as a substantial aspect of the behavior of the Indonesian society has resulted in the marginalization of religious position and function. Then, the infiltration of the model of political Islam has also led to alienation of the character of the Islamic society of Indonesia, from a democratic pattern to a revival (radical one. In this light, the author needs to present a strategy to encourage religious democracy in Indonesia, structurally through formulating the ideal relation model between state and religion and culturally through a substantial pattern of religion embedded with the character of Indonesian religious

Design of advanced primitives for secure multiparty computation : special shuffles and integer comparison

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Villegas Bautista, J.A.

2010-01-01

In modern cryptography, the problem of secure multiparty computation is about the cooperation between mutually distrusting parties computing a given function. Each party holds some private information that should remain secret as much as possible throughout the computation. A large body of research

Democracy and identity

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Milović Miroslav

2007-01-01

Full Text Available It might be that the crisis of democracy is crisis of thinking. Modern metaphysics affirms the monologue of the subject with respect to the problem of rationality, as well as in the social realm. It thus affirms liberal egoism. Such metaphysics structures modernity as a monologue. Thus the question arises: how to think the democracy within this monologue? Democracy appears to be a modern project impossible to achieve.

Spirituality for democracy: Spiritual resources for democratic participation in the 21st century

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Roderick R. Hewitt

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The topic invites us to explore spirituality for democracy and to identify and critique the spiritual resources that are needed for democratic participation in the 21st century. The statement specifically focused on for and not of democracy. Modern expressions of democracy are in crisis. Every context is teething with challenges and conflicts between government sand their citizens concerning how much influence through participation should be allowed in the decision-making process of governance. This topic is of extreme importance for academic discourse because the malaise that has crept into contemporary forms of democratic governance calls for urgent attention. Democratic forms of governance are not set in stone. Rather, they are formed as a result of human deliberation and praxis and cultural developments and must therefore remain open for further reformation. It is this intrinsic capacity for renewal that opens democracy to converse with spirituality. This article begins with identifying the key terms that constitute the academic building blocks of this study. The inherent contradictions in the use of these terms are noted in order to arrive at a theoretical construct to converse with the key concepts of spirituality, democracy, spiritual resources and democratic participation.Through the use of the post colonial lenses of Rastafari hermeneutics, a theoretical framework will be employed to map a life-giving path for contemporary expressions of spirituality for democracy and to identify the resources needed for democratic participation.

Democracy and Historical Writing

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Baets, Antoon

2015-01-01

In this essay, we try to clarify the relationship between democracy and historical writing. The strategy is first exploring the general relationship between democracy and historical awareness, and then, studying the relationship between democracy and historical writing itself to find out whether

(PostMaterialism, Satisfaction with Democracy and Support for Democracy in Eastern Europe

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Pavlović, Zoran

2016-07-01

Full Text Available The materialist-postmaterialist value dimension, understood as assigning priority to self-expression and quality of life as opposed to physical and economic security, has been one of the most important heuristic tools in the analysis of the changes of predominant values in cross-cultural and comparative studies in past decades. In recent elaboration of self-expression and emancipative values (in both cases, with postmaterialism as the most important component, postmaterialist values have been viewed as an essence of democratic political culture and a cultural precondition of effective democracy. This study was aimed at analysing the relation between postmaterialist values (understood as a political/thick culture variable, satisfaction with country’s democracy (institutional/thin culture variable and support for democracy. The data from the European Values Survey (EVS, conducted on the nationally representative samples in twenty East European countries on the total of twenty countries and 30,393 respondents, were used. It is shown that postmaterialism is an important aspect of democratic political culture in Eastern Europe; in general, the most supportive of democracy are postmaterialists. On the other hand, there is a mixed pattern between the postmaterialist values and satisfaction with democracy – in some countries, citizens satisfied with democracy are more prone to choose postmaterialist items compared to the dissatisfied ones, while in some other countries the reverse is true. Both are, however, important predictors of the support for democracy as well as the country’s level of democracy development (measured by the EIU Democracy index. The relevance of postmaterialist values for the promotion of democratic political culture in Eastern Europe, possible alternative mechanisms of value change as well as the materialist-postmaterialist conception are discussed.

Democracy from Islamic law perspective

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Mubarak Abdulkadir

2016-01-01

Full Text Available It is frequently argued that because many Muslim states are monarchies or dictatorships or because of certain events that have taken place within their borders, Islamic law is not compatible with democracy and democracy is even neglected in the provisions of the holy Qur'an. Islamic law, according to what can be traced in its primary sources, not only supports democracy and people's participation in the state affairs but even possesses provisions in the Qur'an verses which encourage counselling and consultation and some scholars deem that to be democratic representation. Islamic Law, according to the provisions of some verses from the holy Qur'an encourages democracy but not liberal democracy like that of the western world. The religious democracy that can go with our modern time and solve many contemporary problems of the Muslim world is the model which was introduced by late Ayatollah Imam Khomeini after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. The author in this research work concludes by showing that the ideal democracy enshrined in the holy Qur'an, as the primary source of Islamic law, is not liberal democracy of the western world, but rather a religious democracy.

Representative Democracy in Australian Local Government

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Colin Hearfield

2009-01-01

Full Text Available In an assessment of representative democracy in Australian local government, this paper considers long-run changes in forms of political representation, methods of vote counting, franchise arrangements, numbers of local government bodies and elected representatives, as well as the thorny question of constitutional recognition. This discussion is set against the background of ongoing tensions between the drive for economic efficiency and the maintenance of political legitimacy, along with more deep-seated divisions emerging from the legal relationship between local and state governments and the resultant problems inherent in local government autonomy versus state intervention.

Contemporary theories of democracy

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Mladenović Ivan

2008-01-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is two-fold: first, to analyze several contemporary theories of democracy, and secondly, to propose a theoretical framework for further investigations based on analyzed theories. The following four theories will be analyzed: pluralism, social choice theory, deliberative democracy and participatory democracy.

Forbidden regimes in the distribution of bipartite quantum correlations due to multiparty entanglement

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kumar, Asutosh [Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211019 (India); Homi Bhabha National Institute, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai 400094 (India); Dhar, Himadri Shekhar [Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211019 (India); Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10/136, A-1040 Vienna (Austria); Prabhu, R. [Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211019 (India); Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, Patna 800013 (India); Sen, Aditi [Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211019 (India); Homi Bhabha National Institute, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai 400094 (India); Sen, Ujjwal, E-mail: ujjwal@hri.res.in [Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Chhatnag Road, Jhunsi, Allahabad 211019 (India); Homi Bhabha National Institute, Anushaktinagar, Mumbai 400094 (India)

2017-05-25

Monogamy is a nonclassical property that limits the distribution of quantum correlation among subparts of a multiparty system. We show that monogamy scores for different quantum correlation measures are bounded above by functions of genuine multipartite entanglement for a large majority of pure multiqubit states. The bound is universal for all three-qubit pure states. We derive necessary conditions to characterize the states that violate the bound, which can also be observed by numerical simulation for a small set of states, generated Haar uniformly. The results indicate that genuine multipartite entanglement restricts the distribution of bipartite quantum correlations in a multiparty system. - Highlights: • Monogamy is an intrinsic property of several quantum characteristics including entanglement. • It is possible to quantify monogamy by using the so-called monogamy scores. • Genuine multisite entanglement can be used to bound monogamy scores. • Distribution of bipartite entanglement in a system is, therefore, restricted by its multisite entanglement content.

The Application of Section 8(3 of the Constitution in the Development of Customary Law Values in South Africa's New Constitutional Dispensation

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N Ntlama

2012-03-01

Full Text Available The constitutional recognition of customary law alongside common law in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 is highly commendable. It also raises the question of whether or not the recognition was undertaken out of genuine respect for customary law or merely forgotten in section 8(3 of the Constitution. It is argued that the exclusion of customary law from the provision of the section is nothing more than the advancement of the dominant status enjoyed by common law, as was the case before the dawn of democracy. This argument is limited to the application of section 8(3 and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, without focusing on the shortcomings of the latter in relation to the remedies provided in the resolution of disputes arising from customary law.

Multiparty-controlled quantum secure direct communication

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xiu, X.-M.; Dong, L.; Gao, Y.-J.; Chi, F.

2007-01-01

A theoretical scheme of a multiparty-controlled quantum secure direct communication is proposed. The supervisor prepares a communication network with Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs and auxiliary particles. After passing a security test of the communication network, a supervisor tells the users the network is secure and they can communicate. If the controllers allow the communicators to communicate, the controllers should perform measurements and inform the communicators of the outcomes. The communicators then begin to communicate after they perform a security test of the quantum channel and verify that it is secure. The recipient can decrypt the secret message in a classical message from the sender depending on the protocol. Any two users in the network can communicate through the above processes under the control of the supervisor and the controllers

Multiparty Quantum English Auction Scheme Using Single Photons as Message Carrier

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Ge; Zhang, Jian-Zhong; Xie, Shu-Cui

2018-03-01

In this paper, a secure and economic multiparty english auction protocol using the single photons as message carrier of bids is proposed. In order to achieve unconditional security, fairness, undeniability and so on, we adopt the decoy photon checking technique and quantum encryption algorithm. Analysis result shows that our protocol satisfies all the characteristics of traditional english auction, meanwhile, it can resist malicious attacks.

Beyond dichotomous explanations: Explaining constitutional control of the executieve with fuzzy-sets.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pennings, P.J.M.

2003-01-01

What are the main variations in the constitutional control of the executive in 45 parliamentary democracies and how can these differences be accounted for? Four competing hypotheses, based on dichotomies, explain the degree of this control by means of contrasting institutional settings: consensus

Beyond dichotomous explanations: explaining constitutional control of the executive with fuzzy-sets

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pennings, P.J.M.

2003-01-01

What are the main variations in the constitutional control of the executive in 45 parliamentary democracies and how can these differences be accounted for? Four competing hypotheses, based on dichotomies, explain the degree of this control by means of contrasting institutional settings: consensus

Cambodia’s Façade Democracy and European Assistance

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Markus Karbaum

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Although Cambodia adopted a modern democratic constitution in 1993, Prime Minister Hun Sen has consolidated an autocratic regime in which elections are the only way political competition plays out, and even that competition is limited. Freedom of expression, horizontal and vertical control mechanisms, and civil participation have been reduced to almost zero by the Royal Government of Cambodia. Irrespective of the deinstitutionalization of liberal principles, the European Commission and some EU member states still perceive Cambodia as moving toward democratization. In the case of Cambodia, the difficulty of external democracy promotion is compounded by the limited impact of formal state institutions, which are completely undermined by kinship relations, personal networks, clientelism and nepotism. However, one can observe not only non-effective efforts toward European democracy promotion, but also increasing human rights violations due to trade facilitations, namely the EU’s “Everything But Arms” initiative.

Cosmopolitan Democracy: A Restatement

Science.gov (United States)

Archibugi, Daniele

2012-01-01

Can democracy be expanded beyond borders? For many years, it was taken for granted that the norms and values of democracy could be applied within the boundaries of a state only. But over the last 20 years, it has been increasingly argued that democracy can also inform international organizations and global politics. This article recapitulates the…

The spirit of the constitution. The institutionalized unsociability in Greece

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Savvas MAVRIDIS

2017-08-01

Full Text Available With this article attempts a comparison of the Greek Constitution of 1975, the constitutions of Germany, USA, Switzerland, Austria, France, UK and Italy on the issue of property relations and general interest, in order to highlight those notified differences relating to these communities and resulted in specific social situations. While the constitutions of the other countries, which are among the most representative democracies of the Western world, are characterized by an increased institutionalization of sociability, the Greek constitution on the issue of general interest takes an antisocial and, at best, neutral attitude. The convergence of the Greek constitution on this issue with the other constitutions is considered a prerequisite for overcoming the crisis and, more generally, for social development. This little effort hopes to contribute to a more social future formulation of the Greek constitution and a corresponding behaviour of Greek society.

Democracy Aid and Electoral Accountability

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Heinrich, Tobias; Loftis, Matthew

2017-01-01

for this by analyzing incumbent turnover in elections following poor economic performance – the economic vote – as a measure of voting to achieve performance accountability. In our analysis of over 1,100 elections in 114 developing countries between 1975 and 2010, we find distinct evidence that increasing receipt......Although foreign policies often fail to successfully promote democracy, over a decade of empirical research indicates that foreign aid specifically for democracy promotion is remarkably successful at improving the survival and institutional strength of fragile democracies. However, these measures...... cannot tell us how well democracy aid supports the central promise of democracy: accountable government. Since institutions can be subverted in various ways that undermine accountability, it is vital to know whether democracy aid supports accountability to assess its overall success. We provide evidence...

Democracy and non-profit housing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hansen, Anne Vorre; Langergaard, Luise Li

2017-01-01

Resident democracy as a special form of participatory democratic set-up is fundamental in the understanding, and self-understanding, of the non-profit housing sector in Denmark. Through a case study, the paper explores how resident democracy is perceived and narrated between residents and employees....... The tensions are related to representative versus participatory democracy; collectivity versus individuality; and service versus welfare. The tensions elucidate how resident democracy is squeezed between different logics, which result in an ambiguous setting for practising democracy. Based on the results...... at a housing association. The study indicates that the meta-story of democracy is disconnected from practice and the lived lives of residents. Three analytical tensions structure the analysis, which relate to the conditions for realizing the democratic ideal embedded in the structure of the sector...

Youth and adults, citizenship and democracy. Implications for Social Work

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Nora Aquín

2007-05-01

Full Text Available The reflections expressed in this article are the product of a study about the Force of the Values of Citizenship in Córdoba Society, conducted between the years 1998 and 2003, by professors-researchers of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. The article first looks at the relationship between Social Work and citizenship. It reviews studies about youth, recognizing that the process of the constitution of citizenship essentially develops during adolescence and early adulthood. Given the importance of the events in Argentina in December 2001, it incorporates a comparative analysis between the practices and representations of youth and adults about democracy and the expressions of collective action that characterize this context. Methodological factors are sketched and some results concerning the tensions between citizenship and democracy are discussed, to analyze the implications for Social Work.

Design and Analysis of a secure multi-party communication protocol

OpenAIRE

Herberth, Klaus

2016-01-01

In the past years digital communication became an important aspect in every day life. Everything is shared and discussed in groups of friends, family or business part- ners without a proper way to protect that information. This master thesis introduces the first secure robust multi-party communication protocol which mimics a physical conversation with the help of a Diffie-Hellman key tree and social behaviours. Robust- ness against offline group members is reached by taking advantage of trans...

Nuclear energy and the constitutional state

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Saladin, P.

1984-01-01

This article puts the main emphasis on the problems of the constitutional principles of democracy, federalism, peaceful living together of peoples and constitutional state, i.e. problems caused by the development of nuclear energy. The fact that these problems are explained by way of the example of Switzerland, does not reduce the validity of the findings also for the German constitutional system, since the problems are identical and comparable. A long-term goal is a state theory which helps to define the aims and tasks of the state under technical, social, economic and cultural conditions of the end of the 20th and perhaps of the 21st century. Nuclear technology challenges the modern Western state and puts to the test the firmness of its legitimacy basis and the efficiency of its principles. It was conceived in a time which is separated from the present by technological revolutions. Safeguarding of humanity is aim and obligation of the modern constitutional state; the constitutional state stipulates the rules of conduct and, if the state remains true to its claim, it sets the procedures and the organization which give due priority order to the development of modern technology. (orig./HSCH) [de

Democracy, Support for Democracy and Corruption. A Longitudinal Study of Latin American Countries

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Davide Grassi

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Although often unable to satisfactorily solve the problem, democracy (especially enduring democracy is commonly believed to reduce corruption. Yet, both Transparency International and the World Bank continue to attach a high risk of corruption to Latin American countries: corruption and impunity remain prevalent in the area, despite consolidating democratic regimes and recent anticorruption reforms. Using level of democracy and its endurance, as well as information on the perceptions of democratic performance and corruption obtained from the Latinobarometro, we analyzed a panel data covering the period 2005-2010 in 14 Latin American countries. Our main results show that levels of democracy and citizens' assessment of government fairness have a positive impact on corruption. However, satisfaction towards democracy has the opposite effect: when citizens believed democratic governments and public administrations to be efficient, they also perceived that gains against corruption had significantly decreased.

Multilingualism and Education for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Biseth, Heidi

2009-01-01

This essay attempts to show the importance of linguistic issues in education for democracy and the close relationship between democracy and multilingualism. Increasingly nation-states are having to adapt to linguistic diversity within their borders and to recognize that democracy requires the participation of all citizens, including those belonging to linguistic minorities. Democracy also requires that all linguistic groups share a sense of community. The author argues the need for educational policies that address these challenges.

PMDP: A Framework for Preserving Multiparty Data Privacy in Cloud Computing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ji Li

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The amount of Internet data is significantly increasing due to the development of network technology, inducing the appearance of big data. Experiments have shown that deep mining and analysis on large datasets would introduce great benefits. Although cloud computing supports data analysis in an outsourced and cost-effective way, it brings serious privacy issues when sending the original data to cloud servers. Meanwhile, the returned analysis result suffers from malicious inference attacks and also discloses user privacy. In this paper, to conquer the above privacy issues, we propose a general framework for Preserving Multiparty Data Privacy (PMDP for short in cloud computing. The PMDP framework can protect numeric data computing and publishing with the assistance of untrusted cloud servers and achieve delegation of storage simultaneously. Our framework is built upon several cryptography primitives (e.g., secure multiparty computation and differential privacy mechanism, which guarantees its security against semihonest participants without collusion. We further instantiate PMDP with specific algorithms and demonstrate its security, efficiency, and advantages by presenting security analysis and performance discussion. Moreover, we propose a security enhanced framework sPMDP to resist malicious inside participants and outside adversaries. We illustrate that both PMDP and sPMDP are reliable and scale well and thus are desirable for practical applications.

Debugging Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexander Likhotal

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Democracy was the most successful political idea of the 20th century. However since the beginning of the new century democracy has been clearly suffering from serious structural problems, rather than a few isolated ailments. Why has it run into trouble, can it be revived? In the consumption driven world people have started to be driven by the belief in economic prosperity as the guarantee of human freedom. As a result, human development and personal status have become hostages of economic performance, deforming basic civilisation’s ethical matrix. However in 10-15 years, the world may be completely different. We are looking at communications and technology revolutions occurring in very abbreviated time frames. Soon, billions of people will interact via a fast data-transferring Metaweb, and it will change social standards as well as human behaviour patterns. Integrated global economies functioning as holistic entities will spur a deep reframing of global governance, shaping a new configuration of political, economic and military power. One can hardly expect that these changes will leave democratic mechanisms intact. It’s a pivotal moment for all of us because we are facing paradigm changes in our way of life. We clearly need a new political vision that is deliverable quickly. Democracy can be reset if it can provide a platform for collective judgement and individual development—in a value-driven process, when values manifest themselves in concrete and socially meaningful issues, and are not reduced to the economic optimization and politics of the wallet. In other words, the only remedy to resolve the crisis of democracy is more democracy.

Multilingualism and Education for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Biseth, Heidi

2009-01-01

This essay attempts to show the importance of linguistic issues in education for democracy and the close relationship between democracy and multilingualism. Increasingly nation-states are having to adapt to linguistic diversity within their borders and to recognize that democracy requires the participation of all citizens, including those…

Law, Democracy & Development

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The evolution and implementation of democracy, good governance practices, human rights and socio-economic development are critical issues facing South Africa and Africa as a whole. Law interacts with this process in ways that may promote or inhibit it. Law, Democracy & Development addresses this interaction. Our aim ...

Comment on ''Secure multiparty computation with a dishonest majority via quantum means''

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Li Yanbing; Wen Qiaoyan; Qin Sujuan

2011-01-01

In a recent paper [K. Loukopoulos and D. E. Browne, Phys. Rev. A 81, 062336 (2010)], five schemes for secure multiparty computation utilizing the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) quantum correlation were presented, which were claimed to be secure in some kinds of security models. However, this study points out that schemes C and D2 could be attacked by corrupted parties replacing photon and exchanging classical information.

Democracy Squared

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rose, Jeremy; Sæbø, Øystein

2005-01-01

On-line political communities, such as the Norwegian site Demokratitorget (Democracy Square), are often designed according to a set of un-reflected assumptions about the political interests of their potential members. In political science, democracy is not taken as given in this way, but can...... be represented by different models which characterize different relationships between politicians and the citizens they represent. This paper uses quantitative and qualitative content analysis to analyze the communication mediated by the Democracy Square discussion forum in the first ten months of its life......-Republican model. In the qualitative analysis the discourse is analysed as repeating genres – patterns in the communication form which also reflect the conflict of interest between citizens and politicians. Though the analysis gives insight into the nature of the discourse the site supports, little is known about...

High-performance secure multi-party computation for data mining applications

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bogdanov, Dan; Niitsoo, Margus; Toft, Tomas

2012-01-01

Secure multi-party computation (MPC) is a technique well suited for privacy-preserving data mining. Even with the recent progress in two-party computation techniques such as fully homomorphic encryption, general MPC remains relevant as it has shown promising performance metrics in real...... operations such as multiplication and comparison. Secondly, the confidential processing of financial data requires the use of more complex primitives, including a secure division operation. This paper describes new protocols in the Sharemind model for secure multiplication, share conversion, equality, bit...

Confidential benchmarking based on multiparty computation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Damgård, Kasper Lyneborg; Nielsen, Kurt

We report on the design and implementation of a system that uses multiparty computation to enable banks to benchmark their customers' confidential performance data against a large representative set of confidential performance data from a consultancy house. The system ensures that both the banks......' and the consultancy house's data stays confidential, the banks as clients learn nothing but the computed benchmarking score. In the concrete business application, the developed prototype help Danish banks to find the most efficient customers among a large and challenging group of agricultural customers with too much...... debt. We propose a model based on linear programming for doing the benchmarking and implement it using the SPDZ protocol by Damgård et al., which we modify using a new idea that allows clients to supply data and get output without having to participate in the preprocessing phase and without keeping...

Recognition of Laborers as Citizens: First Worker Democracy versus Liberal Capitalist Democracy

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Brabec, Martin

2016-01-01

Roč. 15, 1/2 (2016), s. 157-165 ISSN 1569-1500 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA14-19416S Institutional support: RVO:67985955 Keywords : Athenian democracy * capitalism * citizenships * demos * exploitation * liberal democracy * peasants Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion

Quality of democracy in Venezuela

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel H. LEVINE

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Discussions of democracy in contemporary Venezuela lack a settled definition of the subject, how to study it, or indeed of what counts as «democracy» in the first place. The regime has been described as everything from participatory democracy, hybrid, mixed, and personalist to populist, illiberal, or no longer democratic but rather competitive authoritarian. The goal of this article is to measure the quality of democracy in Venezuela, within the terms of a procedural concept of democracy as detailed in our earlier work. Empirical measurement of the quality of democracy on five dimensions (electoral choice, participation, responsiveness, accountability, sovereignty reveals a low level overall and deep institutional weakness under a personalist leadership, with little change from 2005 to 2010. Future scenarios, after the 2012 presidential election result, include reinforcement of authoritarian trends, open militarization, liberalization and institutional strengthening, or long term volatility and polarized conflict. All scenarios are contingent on the health of President Chávez, who is a central unifying factor for his movement and regime

Deweyan Democracy: The Epistemic Context

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Jón Olafsson

2014-03-01

Full Text Available John Dewey famously argued that we should think of democracy as a “way of life”. What this consists in he described as participating according to capacity in public decisions and participating according to need or desire in forming values. He also characterized democracy as “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (Dewey 1966 p. 87; 1954 p. 147; 1957 p. 209. Such and other passages in Dewey’s works show that his conception of democracy is complex. He did not think of it simply as a way of decision-making, nor is democratic procedure of particular importance to him. Concepts such as “associated living” or “communicated experience” point to the social dimensions Dewey was particularly interested in. Dewey also repeatedly claims that democracy demands “social return” from every individual and that democracy enables everyone to develop “distinct capacities” (Dewey 1966, p. 122. A related claim emphasizes how, in a democracy, “all share in useful service and enjoy a worthy leisure” (Dewey 1966, p. 256.

Multiparty Compatibility for Concurrent Objects

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Roly Perera

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Objects and actors are communicating state machines, offering and consuming different services at different points in their lifecycle. Two complementary challenges arise when programming such systems. When objects interact, their state machines must be "compatible", so that services are requested only when they are available. Dually, when objects refine other objects, their state machines must be "compliant", so that services are honoured whenever they are promised. In this paper we show how the idea of multiparty compatibility from the session types literature can be applied to both of these problems. We present an untyped language in which concurrent objects are checked automatically for compatibility and compliance. For simple objects, checking can be exhaustive and has the feel of a type system. More complex objects can be partially validated via test cases, leading to a methodology closer to continuous testing. Our proof-of-concept implementation is limited in some important respects, but demonstrates the potential value of the approach and the relationship to existing software development practices.

Liberal democracy and nuclear despotism: two ethical foreign policy dilemmas

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Thomas E. Doyle

2013-09-01

Full Text Available This article advances a critical analysis of John Rawls's justification of liberal democratic nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War era as found in The Law of Peoples. Rawls's justification overlooked how nuclear-armed liberal democracies are ensnared in two intransigent ethical dilemmas: one in which the mandate to secure liberal constitutionalism requires both the preservation and violation of important constitutional provisions in domestic affairs, and the other in which this same mandate requires both the preservation and violation of the liberal commitment to international legal arrangements and to the rule of law generally. On this view, the choice to violate constitutional provisions and international legal arrangements is evidence of nuclear despotism. Moreover, this choice does not imply that the ethical foreign policy dilemmas were resolved. Instead, it implies that the dilemmas force liberal democratic governments into implementing ethically paradoxical policy outcomes.

Economical multiparty simultaneous quantum identity authentication based on Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yu-Guang, Yang; Qiao-Yan, Wen

2009-01-01

A multiparty simultaneous quantum identity authentication protocol based on Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states is proposed. The multi-user can be authenticated by a trusted third party (TTP) simultaneously. Compared with the scheme proposed recently (Wang et al 2006 Chin. Phys. Lett. 23(9) 2360), the proposed scheme has the advantages of consuming fewer quantum and classical resources and lessening the difficulty and intensity of necessary operations. (general)

Conceptions of "Nordic Democracy" and European Integration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jakobsen, Uffe

Reluctance towards European integration in the Nordic countries is doubtlessly more connected to ideas on democracy than elsewhere. This goes not only for the (empirical) practicability of democracy but also for the (normative) desirability of democracy in the EU. After the Second World War, when...... and reborn after the Second World War as genuine democracy. However, a third narrative developed in which democracy was seen as having its roots in the Nordic countries dating back to the Viking Age or earlier. In the period from the 1940s to the 1980s, a number of Nordic anthologies contained articles...... the process of contemporary European integration was approaching, and the concept of democracy at the same time was heavily contested in public debates and among academics, two conceptions of democracy were struggling: On one hand, democracy was recognized as a European value developing in the form...

Towards a Critique of Political Democracy

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Mario Tronti

2009-05-01

Full Text Available Starting from the idea that democracy always binds together a practice of domination and a project of liberation, Tronti formulates the conditions for a critique of democracy that would permit a rebirth of political thought in the current conjuncture. Bringing the heterodox Marxist traditions of ‘workerism’ and the ‘autonomy of the political’ together with the feminist thinking of difference, Tronti underscores the identitarian tendencies of democracy and the difficulties of combining democracy with a genuine notion of freedom. For Tronti, democracy is increasingly synonymous with the pervasiveness of capitalism understood as ‘bourgeois society’, and the victory of ‘real democracy’ (as one might speak of ‘real socialism’ is the sociological victory of the bourgeoisie. The homo oeconomicus and the homo democraticus are fused into the dominant figure of democracy, the ‘mass bourgeois’. Against the depoliticizing consequences of ‘democratic Empire’, Tronti proposes a profound rethinking of our notion of politics, one which should not shy from reconsidering the elitist critiques of democracy.

Freedom and the Non-Instrumental Value of Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rostbøll, Christian F.

This paper is an intervention in two debates, one concerning the instrumental vs noninstrumental value of democracy, the other concerning the relationship between freedom and democracy. I reject the purely instrumental justification of democracy and defend the idea that democracy has noninstrumen......This paper is an intervention in two debates, one concerning the instrumental vs noninstrumental value of democracy, the other concerning the relationship between freedom and democracy. I reject the purely instrumental justification of democracy and defend the idea that democracy has...... noninstrumental value. I see the noninstrumental value of democracy in terms of freedom rather than the now more common reference to equality or fairness. The freedom argument can better show the noninstrumenal value of democracy and can better respond to some core objections to democratic noninstrumentalism than...... the equality argument. A main aim of this paper is to show that freedom and democracy are not merely instrumentally linked but, rather, intrinsically related. I argue this mainly via a critical engagement with Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as nondomination. My defense of the noninstrumental value...

Democracy and participation in Brazil: decentralization and citizenship in contemporary capitalism

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Francisco César Pinto da Fonseca

2007-05-01

Full Text Available This article analyzes two opposite traditions in relation to the concepts of “decentralization” and “local power” (Brazilian social thinking and the Tocqueville based matrix due to the role given to these concepts by the Brazilian Constitution of 1988. These concepts were considered capable of making viable democratic participation after the end of the military dictatorship. It also analyzes how the Brazilian pro-democracy arrangement and participation has been reconfigured by the third industrial revolution, which the economic and social relations that sustain capital more flexible and precarious. Specifically, it examines the political response (in a broad sense of the Brazilian state – via public health policies, notably the Single Healthcare System (SUS – to this clash of conflicting forces. It also observes how federative factors related to SUS allow understanding the dynamics of democracy, participation and citizenship (in various dimensions in Brazil.

Power and democracy in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jørgen Goul; Jørgensen, Torben Beck; Valgårda, Signild

the numerous projects under the Power Study, and this book is a short presentation of these conclusions.The main focus of the book is the state of democracy in Denmark at the dawn of the 21st century. How has democracy fared, has the development made things better or worse, and to which extent does......In 1997, the Danish Parliament decided to launch a power study, officially An Analysis of Democracy and Power in Denmark. A steering committee consisting of five independent researchers was assigned responsibility for the project. The Steering Committee has gathered the overall conclusions from...... contemporary democracy live up to our democratic ideals? The answer is that in many ways democracy is doing better than we might have expected, considering the intense pressure on the nation state and the democratic institutions in the postwar period. The Danish population is still full of democratic life...

Participation in a post-socialist society

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Eskemose Andersen, Jørgen

2004-01-01

Urban development and urban planning in a society like the Mozambican under transformation from a centrally planned society to a market oriented democracy. The transition from a one party state to a multiparty state involving participation of the population is a lengthy process with many obstacles...

Multiparty Computation from Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Pastro, Valerio; Smart, Nigel

2011-01-01

independent of the function to be computed and of the inputs, and a much more efficient online phase where the actual computation takes place. The online phase is unconditionally secure and has total computational (and communication) complexity linear in $n$, the number of players, where earlier work......We propose a general multiparty computation protocol secure against an active adversary corrupting up to $n-1$ of the $n$ players. The protocol may be used to compute securely arithmetic circuits over any finite field $\\F_{p^k}$. Our protocol consists of a preprocessing phase that is both...... was quadratic in $n$. Hence, the work done by each player in the online phase is independent of $n$ and moreover is only a small constant factor larger than what one would need to compute the circuit in the clear. It is the first protocol in the preprocessing model with these properties. We show a lower bound...

Precise subtyping for synchronous multiparty sessions

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Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The notion of subtyping has gained an important role both in theoretical and applicative domains: in lambda and concurrent calculi as well as in programming languages. The soundness and the completeness, together referred to as the preciseness of subtyping, can be considered from two different points of view: operational and denotational. The former preciseness has been recently developed with respect to type safety, i.e. the safe replacement of a term of a smaller type when a term of a bigger type is expected. The latter preciseness is based on the denotation of a type which is a mathematical object that describes the meaning of the type in accordance with the denotations of other expressions from the language. The result of this paper is the operational and denotational preciseness of the subtyping for a synchronous multiparty session calculus. The novelty of this paper is the introduction of characteristic global types to prove the operational completeness.

Democracy is a historical urgency

Science.gov (United States)

Synek, Miroslav

2015-03-01

Survival of humanity, on this planet, may depend, heavily, on coping with advancing technology of nuclear missiles. Let us consider critical alternatives of powerful governments: democracy, as an alternative to dictatorship. Democracy is based on free elections, as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Democracy is a historical urgency, in the age of inter-continental nuclear missiles, computerized on a push-button, conceivably controllable by a very powerful, miscalculating and/or insane, dictator, capable of producing global nuclear holocaust, on our entire planet. Diplomacy, together with supporting activities, should be utilized, to help, in important steps, at this time, for achieving democracy in critical areas.

One of My Favorite Judges: Constitutional Interpretation, Democracy and Antonin Scalia

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Allan James

2017-05-01

Full Text Available In this article the author explains why Antonin Scalia was one of his favourite judges. It starts by excerpting some of Justice Scalia’s most biting and funny comments, both from judicial and extra-judicial sources. Then it explains the attractions of an originalist approach to constitutional interpretation, though arguing that the intentionalist strain is preferable to Scalia’s ‘original public meaning’ or ‘new originalism’ approach. Finally, it argues that within the confines of a constitutional structure with an entrenched bill of rights, Scalia was a strong proponent of democratic decision-making to resolve key social policy decisions, unlike many other top judges.

A trace-based model for multiparty contracts

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvitved, Tom; Klaedtke, Felix; Zălinescu, Eugen

2012-01-01

In this article we present a model for multiparty contracts in which contract conformance is defned abstractly as a property on traces. A key feature of our model is blame assignment, which means that for a given contract, every breach is attributed to a set of parties. We show that blame...... assignment is compositional by de¿ning contract conjunction and contract disjunction. Moreover, to specify real-world contracts, we introduce the contract speci¿cation language CSL with an operational semantics. We show that each CSL contract has a counterpart in our trace-based model and from...... the operational semantics we derive a run-time monitor. CSL overcomes limitations of previously proposed formalisms for specifying contracts by supporting: (history sensitive and conditional) commitments, parametrised contract templates, relative and absolute temporal constraints, potentially in¿nite contracts...

We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution. 2004 National Finalists' Knowledge of and Support for American Democratic Institutions and Processes

Science.gov (United States)

Soule, Suzanne; Bennett, Sharareh Frouzesh

2004-01-01

"We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution," is an educational program developed by the Center for Civic Education. The program instructs students on the history and principles of American constitutional democracy with the primary goal of promoting civic competence and responsibility among the nation's elementary, middle, and…

On Education and the Taste for Democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Freire, Paulo

1991-01-01

Argues that it is impossible to teach democracy without living democracy. Shows the need to create the taste for democracy, and the appetite for learning, taking risks, and for appreciating differences. Asserts that teachers are not actually champions of civil rights, freedom and democracy but will be called on to fight for these ideals. (PRA)

Multiparty quantum secret sharing of secure direct communication

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Zhanjun

2005-01-01

Based on the two-step protocol [F.G. Deng, G.L. Long, X.S. Liu, Phys. Rev. A 68 (2003) 042317], we propose a (n,n)-threshold multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol of secure direct communication. In our protocol, the sender's secure direct communication message can be extracted only if all the sharers collaborate. We show a variant version of this protocol based on the variant two-step protocol. This variant version can considerably reduce the realization difficulty in experiment. In contrast to the use of multi-particle GHZ states in the case that the sharer number is larger than 3, the use and identification of Bell states are enough in our two protocols disregarding completely the sharer number, hence, our protocols are more feasible in technique

Democracy, education, and economics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Emami, Z.; Davis, J.

2009-01-01

This paper examines the connections between democracy and education, particularly as it concerns economics. We adopt a pluralist proceduralist view of democracy, and argue that this requires a view of individuals as active decision-makers able to deliberate and reflect on their different ideas and

Örgütsel Demokrasi( Organizational Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pınar ERKAL COŞAN

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The understanding of democracy that is shaped by contemporary economic, political, social and cultural developments makes us re-consider organizational life. The number of studies on organizational democracy rises exponentially whereby contributions to and complexities for the organization are discussed. In this context, this study begins with a conceptualization of organizational democracy from modern business management perspective, which is followed by respectively; a discussion of previous research on organizational democracy, the causes behind the new departure towards organizational democracy, the contributions to organizations, the complexities and problems faced during practical implementation, and finally a literature review on the ways and means of ensuring organizational democracy. With this study, the following questions will be raised to scholarly discussion; is organizational democracy just an ideal emphasizing the human element and employee satisfaction, or is it a strategy that needs managerial attention for attainment of organizational goals in 21 st century?

From Deliberative Democracy to Communicative Democracy in the Classroom. A Response to "Education for Deliberative Democracy: A Typology of Classroom Discussions"

Science.gov (United States)

Weasel, Lisa

2017-01-01

This response to Samuelsson's typology for assessing deliberative democracy in classroom discussions views his analysis through an equity lens. It offers Young's model of communicative democracy as a resource and argues that incorporating that model's emphasis on greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling into the typology can help to promote more…

Constitutional provisions on judicial independence and EU standards

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Kolaković-Bojović Milica

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Implementation of the 'Checks and balances' principle as one of the milestones in modern democracies, demonstrates its full complexity when it comes to balancing guaranties of judicial independence and the need to prevent misinterpretation or abuse of the rights. Additional issue in that process is determination of the border line between constitutional and guaranties of judicial independence prescribed by law. Raising that issue opens various questions which go beyond the legal framework itself. It actually tackles the historical, political and cultural country background. Furthermore, if analyzed from the prospective of the requirements defined in the accession negotiation process with the EU, constitutional guaranties of (nonapplication of the EU standards might demotivate candidate countries in their efforts to achieve substantial reform results.

The Principle of Power Distribution as a Factor of Democracy: Case Study

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Kazimieras Monkevičius

2011-03-01

Full Text Available The principle of power distribution is directly connected with the theory of power distribution, which was first launched by the philosophers John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu. This principle was first established in democratic constitutions and soon became one of the main factors of the democratic development of countries. After the regaining of independence of Lithuania, the principle of power distribution was established in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania in 1992. Therefore, when analyzing the principle of power distribution as the aspect of democracy, one can take into account the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992, which had a significant impact on the development of contemporary democratic Lithuania. The aim of this article is to reveal the rarely raised topic of the establishment of the principle of power distribution in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania of 1992, as well as to discuss its importance in the process of democratizing the independent country of Lithuania.   

Deliberative Democracy and Adult Civic Education

Science.gov (United States)

Carcasson, Martin; Sprain, Leah

2012-01-01

Adult education programs should turn to the deliberative democracy movement in order to help their communities better address the "wicked problems" they face. The authors contend that due to the "wicked" nature of problems in the diverse democracies, communities must develop and sustain their capacity for deliberative democracy and collaborative…

We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution 2005 National Finalists' Knowledge of and Support for American Democratic Institutions and Processes

Science.gov (United States)

Bennett, Sharareh Frouzesh; Soule, Suzanne

2005-01-01

We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution is an educational program developed by the Center for Civic Education (the Center). The program instructs students on the history and principles of American constitutional democracy with the primary goal of promoting civic competence and responsibility among the nation's elementary, middle, and…

Conceptualizing and Measuring the Quality of Democracy: The Citizens’ Perspective

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dieter Fuchs

2018-03-01

Full Text Available In recent years, several measurements of the quality of democracy have been developed (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy Project. These objective measurements focus on institutional and procedural characteristics of democracy. This article starts from the premise that in order to fully understand the quality of democracy such objective measurements have to be complemented by subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens. The aim of the article is to conceptualize and measure the subjective quality of democracy. First, a conceptualization of the subjective quality of democracy is developed consisting of citizens’ support for three normative models of democracy (electoral, liberal, and direct democracy. Second, based on the World Values Survey 2005–2007, an instrument measuring these different dimensions of the subjective quality of democracy is suggested. Third, distributions for different models of democracy are presented for some European and non-European liberal democracies. They reveal significant differences regarding the subjective quality of democracies. Fourth, the subjective quality of democracy of these countries is compared with the objective quality of democracy based on three indices (electoral democracy, liberal democracy and direct popular vote developed by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem Project. Finally, further research questions are discussed.

Democracy and Teacher Education: Setting Priorities

Science.gov (United States)

Goodman, Jesse H.

2009-01-01

As John Dewey noted in his last book, each generation, in its turn, must assume responsibility as caretaker of democracy. He noted that one should never take democracy for granted. Everyone lives in an imperfect democracy, and teacher educators should play their part in protecting, nurturing, and advancing democratic ideals, rituals, values, and…

Separation of powers and constitutional loyalty

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Marieta SAFTA

2013-06-01

Full Text Available The complexity and dynamics of political life leads to developments and reconsiderations in terms of classical theories of constitutional law. Such a process occurs also in the case of separation of powers. Many factors have a bearing on how this theory is currently translated into practice, which requires additional perspectives of analysis in order to develop improved models of cooperation and balance of powers, according to new political realities. This study aims at examining the principle of separation and balance of powers in terms of mutual respect and loyal cooperation between institutions, or, in a broader sense, of constitutional loyalty, an intrinsic value-principle of all constitutions, without which no fundamental law, no matter of how democratic it might be, could function properly2. Based on examination of concrete cases drawn from the case-law of the Constitutional Court of Romania, the study demonstrates that, in lack of constitutional loyalty, the objective pursued by enshrining the principle of separation of powers cannot be achieved effectively, i.e. compliance of public authorities and political actors with constitutional provisions is purely formal and the alleged collaboration between them is a "dialogue of the deaf" at the expense of democracy. The seriousness of the consequences of this type of behaviour requires identification of remedies. What are the limits and what solutions can be identified in this regard are questions that also we aim to answer.

THE PLACE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE, THROUGH THE GLASS OF CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW

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Valentina BĂRBĂȚEANU

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Political parties are nowadays key actors in democratic societies, shaping social mentalities, creating and following ideologies, inducing common vision, establishing targets and ideals. Their main goal is gaining the political power by conquering the access to the highest levels of decision in the State. They are based on the freedom of association and, unlike other associations, they have a specific constitutional and legal position because they are defining and giving expression to the citizens' political will, in respect of the principles of democracy. Romanian Basic Law provides that political pluralism represents one of the supreme values of the Romanian State governed by the rule of law. In this context, the Constitutional Court has solved, over the years, various issues regarding the political parties. Authorities of constitutional jurisdiction in European countries have also been asked to express, one way or another, their opinion in connection with the activity of the political parties. Taking into consideration their importance for a healthy democratic system, the European Commission for Democracy through Law -Venice Commission has paid special attention to the complexity of aspects involved by the protection of democratic values.

Corruption, democracy and bureaucracy

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Aviral Kumar TIWARI

2012-09-01

Full Text Available This paper examines the relationship of corruption with democracy and bureaucracy in the 82 countries in a panel framework. For the analysis we use rule of law, regulatory quality, control over corruption and secondary school enrollment ratio as control variables. We find that democracy, rule of law and control over corruption decreases the level of corruption. When we allowed for interaction effect among independent variables we find the evidence of strong interaction effect between all of the explanatory variables. We also find that, surprisingly, higher democracy and rule of law are positively associated with the level of corruption while higher bureaucracy negatively.

Contested visions of American democracy: citizenship, public housing, and the international arena.

Science.gov (United States)

Argersinger, Jo Ann E

2010-01-01

This essay reexamines the history of public housing and the controversy it generated from the Great Depression to the Cold War. By recasting that history in the global arena, it demonstrates that the debate over public housing versus homeownership was also a debate over the meaning of American citizenship and democracy, pointing up starkly divergent notions about what was and was not American. Through an examination of national conflicts and neglected local struggles, this article further shows that the fight over public housing was far more meaningful and volatile than traditionally assumed. Both critics and advocates of public housing drew from international experiences and imagery in positioning the home as a constitutive feature of citizenship in American democracy. Fears of Bolshevism, fascism, and communism served to internationalize issues of race, space, and housing and together shaped the decision of whether a decent home was an American right or privilege.

Designing institutions for global democracy: flexibility through escape clauses and sunset provisions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jonathan W. Kuyper

2013-12-01

Full Text Available How can advocates of global democracy grapple with the empirical conditions that constitute world politics? I argue that flexibility mechanisms—;commonly used to advance international cooperation—should be employed to make the institutional design project of global democracy more tractable. I highlight three specific reasons underpinning this claim. First, flexibility provisions make bargaining over different institutional designs more manageable. Second, heightened flexibility takes seriously potential concerns about path-dependent institutional development. Finally, deliberately shortening the time horizons of agents by employing flexibility provisions has cognitive benefits as it forces designers to focus specifically on issues of feasibility as well as desirability. I discuss a range of flexibility mechanisms and highlight the utility of sunset provisions and escape clauses. From this analysis, I build an argument for the usage of small-scale democratic experiments through which citizens (or their representatives have a say in global policy making.

Democracy and development in Nigeria

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tolu Lawal

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Democracy and development are global phenomena. Every country in the world aspires and claims to be democratic. This is because of the role of the latter in developmental process. This paper examined the linkage between democracy and development in Nigeria, using ethics as the yardstick for democratic adherence. The paper adopted content analysis approach to source its data and concluded that democracy is an ingredient of development. It must therefore be sustained to evolve and ensure sustainable development.

The role of science in deepening democracy: the case for water in post-Apartheid South Africa

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anthony Turton

2009-04-01

Full Text Available South Africa is a water constrained country with a complex history of resource capture and human rights abuses. Science, as practiced by the national science councils, could play a significant role in deepening our democracy. This paper explores two possible paradigms - one where science is divorced from the national constitution, and the other where our science is embedded in the national constitution. The paper argues that the latter approach would make our national science more relevant, but of necessity would embroil it in issues of historic legacy and therefore become “messy”.

Dewey's Participatory Educational Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Višnovský, Emil; Zolcer, Štefan

2016-01-01

In this essay, Emil Višnovský and Štefan Zolcer outline John Dewey's contribution to democratic theory as presented in his 1916 classic "Democracy and Education." The authors begin with a review of the general context of Dewey's conception of democracy, and then focus on particular democratic ideas and concepts as presented in…

Democracy and development: the Nigerian experience | Ebohon ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The conventional notions on the relationship between democracy and development are that democracy accelerates development. Based on the Nigeria experience, this paper argues that both democracy and authoritarianism are social system based political ideologies that derives their character from the wider society, ...

Democracy in Brazil: presidentialism, party coalitions and the decision making process

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Fernando Limongi

Full Text Available There is no reason to treat the Brazilian political system as singular. Coalitions obey and are governed by party principles. The president, whose institutional power was enhanced by the 1988 Constitution, has a monopoly over legislative initiative, which approximates the Brazilian system to the European parliamentary democracies. Even though it is based upon empirical data, this essay formulates theoretical problems, such as the importance of institutional choices and how these impact on relations between the majority and minority in democratic governments.

The Myth of Bourgeois Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mulvad, Andreas Christian Møller; Stahl, Rune Møller

representative democracy - not abolish it. Third, we highlight how Leninists and liberals have unknowingly colluded to sustain the myth that parliamentary democracy is essentially liberal. Finally, turning our attention to the current neoliberal conjuncture, we argue that Badiou’s and Žižek’s notion......This paper argues that the Left should move beyond the commonplace understanding – upheld by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek - that parliamentary democracy is essentially of a bourgeois nature. We show first how the introduction of parliamentary democracy – defined as constitutionalization of state...... power under a legislative body, with regular elections and universal suffrage – was everywhere a result of the pressure of social movements from below against the aspirations of both conservatives and liberals. Second, we reread Marx on the Paris Commune to discover how Marx wanted to radicalize...

Search Results | Page 6 | IDRC - International Development ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Results 51 - 60 of 132 ... Kitu kichafu sana : Daniel Arap Moi and the dirty business of dismembering Kenya's body politic. Kenya''s return to multi-party politics in 1991 has been defined by campaigns for democracy and human rights, the intensification of politicization of ethnic difference or ethnicization of political differences, ...

We the People...The Citizen and the Constitution: Knowledge of and Support for Democratic Institutions and Processes by Participating Students. National Finals, 2000.

Science.gov (United States)

Soule, Suzanne

The "We the People...The Citizen and the Constitution" program is an instructional program on the history and principles of U.S. constitutional democracy for elementary, middle school, and high school students. At the high school level, classes may choose to enter a formal competition, advancing from congressional district and state…

The American Dream, Democracy, and Participatory Theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Wood, George H.

1983-01-01

America has moved from participatory democracy to protective democracy, with political elites making the decisions. The result has been a culturally disenfranchised people abandoning the political system which does not want them. Calls for a return to participatory democracy and citizenship education programs which foster it. (CS)

Democracy and the Moral Imperative to Philosophize

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Humphrey, J. F.

2008-12-01

Full Text Available An important part of Cornelius Castoriadis’ exploration into the adventure of modernity involves his reflections on democracy. Indeed, in no less than three works [Figures of the Thinkable, Rising Tide of Insignificancy (The Big Sleep, and World in Fragments], Castoriadis devotes a part, entitled Polis, in which he discusses democracy and its relation to modernity by beginning with the Greeks. In World in Fragments, the section, "The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary" clearly indicates the relation existing between the ancient Greeks and democracy in his mind. In my paper, I have considered Castoriadis’ reflections on democracy and the way in which he employs the Greeks in his attempt to rethink modern democracies. I shall argue that if we are to follow Castoriadis in embracing an authentic emancipation promised by but not delivered by modernity, we will have to look to his understanding of democracy as providing the way beyond both the cynicism of post-modernism and false hopes of neo-modernism.

Buffered Communication Analysis in Distributed Multiparty Sessions

Science.gov (United States)

Deniélou, Pierre-Malo; Yoshida, Nobuko

Many communication-centred systems today rely on asynchronous messaging among distributed peers to make efficient use of parallel execution and resource access. With such asynchrony, the communication buffers can happen to grow inconsiderately over time. This paper proposes a static verification methodology based on multiparty session types which can efficiently compute the upper bounds on buffer sizes. Our analysis relies on a uniform causality audit of the entire collaboration pattern - an examination that is not always possible from each end-point type. We extend this method to design algorithms that allocate communication channels in order to optimise the memory requirements of session executions. From these analyses, we propose two refinements methods which respect buffer bounds: a global protocol refinement that automatically inserts confirmation messages to guarantee stipulated buffer sizes and a local protocol refinement to optimise asynchronous messaging without buffer overflow. Finally our work is applied to overcome a buffer overflow problem of the multi-buffering algorithm.

Revisiting democratic civil peace: Electoral regimes and civil conflict

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bartusevicius, Henrikas; Skaaning, Svend-Erik

2018-01-01

to use force. Building on this framework, we distinguish between five regime types according to their electoral features—non-electoral autocracies, single-party autocracies, multi-party autocracies, minimalist democracies, and polyarchies—and specify hypotheses regarding the likelihood of conflict...... in each. In a global statistical analysis spanning 1817‒2006 and employing the new Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED), we find that polyarchies, characterized by unconstrained contestation, have a lower risk of conflict than any other regime type (although minimalist democracies are only slightly......) elections and minimal electoral competition. Overall, our study underscores the importance of focusing on the central attributes of democracy and sheds new light on the relationship between particular regime features (or types) and conflict, thereby contributing to the growing efforts in conflict research...

Deliberative Democracy and Precautionary Public Reasoning : Exploratory Thoughts

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Genevieve Fuji-Johnson

2006-05-01

Full Text Available Because public policy is legally binding and, perhaps more pointedly, can have pervasive social and environmental consequences for the autonomy of persons, it should be justifiable to those it could so affect. What is much more controversial, and what constitutes the basic intuitive claim of this exploratory paper, is that certain public policies should be morally justifiable to both existing and future persons. My concern is with policies in such areas as energy, climate change control, nuclear waste management, natural resources management, and genomics research and commercialization, which can no doubt improve our lives and our descendant’s lives, but which can also result in tremendous adverse effects for centuries to come. In this short paper, I suggest that the ideal of deliberative democracy provides a way of morally justifying such policies to both existing and future generations. If we take seriously the requirements of this ideal, we may have to modify our public reasoning so that it includes reasons that are generally acceptable among contemporaries as well as reasons that would be acceptable to posterity. The suggestion I make in this paper is thatintegral to the ideal of deliberative democracy in the transgenerational contextis a future-oriented and precautionary public reasoning.

Efficient Secure Multiparty Subset Computation

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Sufang Zhou

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Secure subset problem is important in secure multiparty computation, which is a vital field in cryptography. Most of the existing protocols for this problem can only keep the elements of one set private, while leaking the elements of the other set. In other words, they cannot solve the secure subset problem perfectly. While a few studies have addressed actual secure subsets, these protocols were mainly based on the oblivious polynomial evaluations with inefficient computation. In this study, we first design an efficient secure subset protocol for sets whose elements are drawn from a known set based on a new encoding method and homomorphic encryption scheme. If the elements of the sets are taken from a large domain, the existing protocol is inefficient. Using the Bloom filter and homomorphic encryption scheme, we further present an efficient protocol with linear computational complexity in the cardinality of the large set, and this is considered to be practical for inputs consisting of a large number of data. However, the second protocol that we design may yield a false positive. This probability can be rapidly decreased by reexecuting the protocol with different hash functions. Furthermore, we present the experimental performance analyses of these protocols.

Deliberative Democracy V. Politics of Identity

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OSCAR PÉREZ DE LA FUENTE

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The defenders of deliberative democracy insist in the idea that for searching political truths is necessary to use values as universality, rationality and fairness. The defenders of the politics of identity distrust from this deliberative approach because, the interests of the powerful groups of the society are often behind those values. The common approach of deliberative democracy misunderstands the proper role, language, expression and actual interests of the members of the minorities. Deliberative democracy isn't really compromised with pluralism –social, cultural, ethnic, racial…– because it is more compromised with formal and substantial rules of decision that finally determine the result of the deliberation. Minorities claim for a new understanding of the democracy from the difference, from the identity. Thus, democracy is the result of a dialogue, not from abstractions, but from the particularity. In this sense, it is important the notion of ethics of alterity as a moral effort to understand the Other. This exercise excludes all kind of alterophobia (misogyny, xenophobia, racism, homophobia... and it is against relativist approach. An identity is legitimate in the way it includes the alterity. The minorities claim to think, other time, topics as democracy from the dynamics between identity/alterity, inclusion/exclusion, equal dignity/differentiated identity.

Enabling Analytics on Sensitive Medical Data with Secure Multi-Party Computation.

Science.gov (United States)

Veeningen, Meilof; Chatterjea, Supriyo; Horváth, Anna Zsófia; Spindler, Gerald; Boersma, Eric; van der Spek, Peter; van der Galiën, Onno; Gutteling, Job; Kraaij, Wessel; Veugen, Thijs

2018-01-01

While there is a clear need to apply data analytics in the healthcare sector, this is often difficult because it requires combining sensitive data from multiple data sources. In this paper, we show how the cryptographic technique of secure multi-party computation can enable such data analytics by performing analytics without the need to share the underlying data. We discuss the issue of compliance to European privacy legislation; report on three pilots bringing these techniques closer to practice; and discuss the main challenges ahead to make fully privacy-preserving data analytics in the medical sector commonplace.

El rol de la democracia deliberativa y su ejercicio legítimo (the role of the deliberative democracy and its legitimate exercise

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María Liliana Castillo Castillo

2014-12-01

Full Text Available RESUMEN El presente texto, derivado de proceso de investigación, busca dejar elementos para el debate en torno a la construcción de la democracia deliberativa procurando establecer cuál podría ser el marco teórico en el que se puede ajustar el caso Colombiano. Para tal fin, el texto presentará: Un aparte para el debate en torno a la democracia deliberativa como procedimientos de legitimación de decisiones, estableciendo cuál es el papel de los tribunales constitucionales en la construcción de este tipo de democracia; segundo, ahondar con especial énfasis en las decisiones de la Corte Constitucional, si permiten o no, un espacio abierto para la democracia deliberativa; y tercero, se presenta un aporte al debate académico, en torno a la situación actual en Colombia en la construcción de una democracia deliberativa. ABSTRACT The present text, derived from a research process, seeks to allow aims to leave elements to the debate over the construction of the deliberative democracy managing to establish, which the theoretical framework could be, in which the Colombian case can be adjusted. For such a purpose, the text will introduce, first, the debate over the deliberative democracy as legitimacy of decision-making procedures, establishing what the role played by the Constitutional Court, in the construction of this type of democracy, is. Second, to deepen, with special emphasis, on the decisions of the Constitutional Court, whether they allow it or not, an open space for the deliberative democracy, and third, it introduces a contribution to the academic debate over the current situation in Colombia in the construction of a deliberative democracy.

"We the People... The Citizen and the Constitution": Knowledge of and Support for Democratic Institutions and Processes by Participating Students. National Finals 2001.

Science.gov (United States)

Soule, Suzanne

The "We the People... The Citizen and the Constitution" program is an instructional program on the history and principles of U.S. constitutional democracy for elementary, middle, and high school students. The program is based on curricular materials developed by the Center for Civic Education. At the high school level, classes may choose…

Democracy as a legitimizing ideology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Henry, P.J.; Wetherell, G.A.; Brandt, M.

2015-01-01

Democracy as an abstract belief system bestows rights to individuals and serves egalitarian principles. However, the language of democracy may be used to justify harmful treatment of others in the world. Data from 3 representative samples of adults are presented demonstrating that satisfaction with

‘Small is Beautiful’, Analysing the Democratising Effect of Localism, Greater Regional Autonomy, Decentralisation and Constitutional Reform

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ben DUKE

2014-12-01

Full Text Available This paper seeks to provide a critical theoretical comparative review of the effect upon democracy, constitutional reform could have on new smaller states. This paper posits that it is an untried, untested assumption that democratisation will follow, if nation states’ populations choose constitutional reform. This paper also posits that social, economic, political, historical and cultural generic domains influence the drive for constitutional reform in very different ways globally. This paper intends to discuss the pressure for constitutional reform, from a globalisation perspective. This paper will demonstrate how globalisation itself is a significant causal factor, increasing the propensity towards constitutional reform of smaller states. This paper will also demonstrate that the EU anti-globalisation sentiment, asking for constitutional reform, is globally replicated elsewhere.

The Populist Conception of Democracy beyond Popular Sovereignty

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Pepijn Corduwener

2014-11-01

Full Text Available With populist parties making electoral progress across the European continent, the question of what their electoral success means for contemporary democratic systems has gained increasing significance. This article investigates how two populist radical right parties, the Austrian FPÖ and the Dutch PVV, conceptualise democracy, based on a wide range of party documents released over recent decades. It builds upon recent academic consensus that the relationship between populism and democracy is best understood from a ‘minimalist’ perspective, seeing populism not as antagonistic to democracy, but as an ideology that conceptualises democracy primarily in terms of popular sovereignty. The article adds to the existing literature by demonstrating that we can extend this understanding of the populist conception of democracy in three aspects: the populist emphasis on state neutrality; a two-fold notion of equality; and the extension of the political sphere in society. Based upon these three issues, the article concludes by exploring how the populist conception of democracy relates to the most dominant form of democracy practised nowadays, liberal democracy, and to what extent it reflects changes in our democratic political culture.

Is Democracy A Prerequisite

OpenAIRE

Abdiweli M. Ali

2011-01-01

The current literature is silent on whether democracies are more fragile or less susceptible to economic and political breakdowns. Using a host of political instability and policy instability variables, this paper explores empirically, whether political freedom (a proxy for democracy) has any effect on the stability of the political order. Furthermore, it also explores the possibility that political freedom explains differences in the stability of economic policies.

Practicing Democracy in the NCLB Elementary Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Davis, Margaret H.

2010-01-01

The practice of teaching democracy in school is diminishing. The implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has forced teachers to teach to the test, and has required some to follow scripted curriculum, leaving little time or incentive for teaching democracy. This study examines the importance of practicing democracy and identifies ways in…

Liberty Challenge or Dangers of Liberal Democracy

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Dalia Eidukienė

2011-03-01

Full Text Available The article analyses dialectics of a modern democracy and liberalism through the new (from the quality point of view subsistence of liberty, the priority element of democracy, in liberal democracies. The significance of such discourse is determined by the existing social inequality and its conversion into political domain. Particular attention is paid to the social issue, which was treated by Max Weber already as the reason of death of the old, fanatic German “national liberalism”, since it has not managed to belong to the German environment. Even today, it still lies in the principles of life and reality of “young” democratic post­soviet states. Conversion of a social issue into political domain disorganises the society, and it is hardly capable to socialise its norms and values in order to be obligated with regard to civic goals. In other words, the social issue significantly adjusts the pace and direction of transformation of the society. Therefore, an immature “young” liberal democracy may become “less liberal” or no longer conform to the “strict” definition of liberal democracy. Referring to the above, we conclude that social composition should become the medium of political reconstruction for “young” democracies. This does not mean, however, the change of the genetic code of liberalism. This is a striving to vest it, as an ideology, additional powers for rationalisation of democracy by delivering to it the content and the meaning, which would answer the challenges and problems of the time. Liberalism should create a new, from the quality point of view, hierarchy of values and become a new context for both political thinking and democracy. This would render new impulses to economic and public politics, meanwhile developing new premises for a new, from the quality point of view, democracy that would help to consolidate the society for the becoming of liberal democracy.  

Community, Democracy, and Neighborhood News.

Science.gov (United States)

Hindman, Elizabeth Blanks

1998-01-01

Contributes to scholarship on democracy, community, and journalism by examining the interplay between communication, democracy, and community at an inner-city neighborhood newspaper. Concludes that, through its focus on neighborhood culture, acknowledgment of conflict, and attempts to provide a forum for the neighborhood's self-definition, the…

Democracy in the Arab World

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Given that liberalism contains principles that 'have been profoundly hostile to democracy', ..... The challenge posed for Arab democracy by Islamist thought and practice is probably the ..... (2nd edn), London: Malaysian Think Tank London. ...... Thus, the Jordanian treasury was not very dependent on internal taxes, certainly ...

Local democracy in large municipalities

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thuesen, Annette Aagaard

2017-01-01

Municipal amalgamations in Denmark in 2007 led to concern for local rural democracy, as the number of politicians from rural areas dropped after the reform. To preserve rural democracy, local councils at the village level were established in some municipalities, and they have begun to prepare local...

The Mirage of Global Democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Wilde, J.H.

The literature about global democracy deals with two different types of democratization: Type 1 is about spreading democracy across sovereign states as the basis for good governance. It focuses on the quality of the state/society-nexus: the balance between coercion, reward and identity. Type 2 is

Student politics at Makerere University in the Lens of Schmitter and ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

While the influence of political parties on student politics has been a topic of investigation for a long time, little research has been done in relation to Africa's young democracies and the re-emergence of multi-party politics in these countries. It is with this understanding that this study assesses a theoretical framework adapted ...

Castoriadis’ Concept of Institution and Democracy

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Dahl Rendtorff, Jacob

2008-12-01

Full Text Available In this article I discuss the relation between institution and democracy in Castoriadis’ philosophy. The paper proposes an outline of the development of Castoriadis’ political philosophy with focus on institutionalization, imagination and self-limitation of democratic institutions as central elements in Castoridis’ thought. We begin with a short introduction to the concept of institution and institutionalization. Then we discuss the elements of Castoridis’ critique of bureaucracy as a way to distinguish between totalitarian society and democracy. This is the basis for understanding the relation between the imaginary, freedom and autonomy as basic elements of democracy. Finally the paper discusses Castoridis’ new notion of democracy as a kind of self-limitation and creation of collective meaning as the basis for social legitimacy.

Multiparty Quantum Secret Sharing via Introducing Auxiliary Particles Using a Pure Entangled State

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xia Yan; Song Jie; Song Heshan; Huang Xiaoli

2008-01-01

We propose a new multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol via introducing auxiliary particles using a non-maximally entangled (pure) two-particle state without a Bell measurement. The communication parties utilize decoy particles to check eavesdropping. After ensuring the security of the quantum channel, the sender encodes the secret message and transmits it to the receiver by using controlled-NOT operation and von Neumann measurement. If and only if all the agents agree to collaborate, they can read out the secret message

The Future of Afghan Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Scott Seward Smith

2014-03-01

Full Text Available The 2014 Afghan presidential and provincial council elections will have a critical effect on the future of Afghan democracy. At a minimum, they must be sufficiently credible to prevent severe division among elite political actors and ensure the survival of the current constitutional order. Yet there are growing expectations that the election might not merely be an elite pact between powerful figures from Afghanistan’s recent past, but more fully represent popular aspirations, particularly those of the growing urban and youth population. In order for this to happen, they must also be held in accordance with the legal rules that guide them, rather than be characterized by manipulation of these rules and government interference. Despite the problems of fraud in the 2009 election, where government figures and the electoral institutions themselves were partly responsible for the significant fraud that took place, there are a number of reasons to expect that the 2014 election will be an improvement on 2009, both in terms of participation and organization. If the elections held in Afghanistan since 2001 have diminished hopes for Afghan democracy, it is partly because an electoral formalism was introduced in Afghanistan before other elements crucial to a functioning democracy—the rule of law, political parties, institutionalized governance—really existed. The 2014 elections may reveal the boundaries of an emerging democratic space in which these features are beginning to emerge and, more importantly, where their value is increasingly recognized by Afghans. If, in every political transition, the future grapples with the past, the 2014 elections in Afghanistan may be a decisive arena of that struggle.

Institutionalizing Instability: The Constitutional Roots of Insecurity in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

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Hilary Matfess

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Nigeria’s return to democracy has been a tumultuous era; the Fourth Republic has been characterized by insurgencies and violence throughout the country. Though seemingly disparate movements, the violence of the Fourth Republic has its roots in the country’s constitution. Three aspects of the 1999 Nigerian constitution stand out as particularly problematic: the centralization of the police at the federal level with limited sub-national oversight, the ambiguous concept of indigeneity, and the overlapping, often contradictory land tenure systems endorsed. All of these allude to the precariousness of Nigerian federalism under the current constitution; ultimately, the police centralization primes the country for violence, while the indigeneity rules and land tenure system make it more difficult to negotiate stable post-conflict settlements. The country’s recent experience with Boko Haram will be used to illustrate how these constitutional tenets facilitate instability.

Democracy Barometer. Methodology. Version 4

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Merkel, Wolfgang; Bochsler, Daniel;; Bousbah, Karima;

2014-01-01

Based on our theoretical concept of democracy, it is feasible to measure a country’s quality of democracy for a given point in time. Nevertheless, the quality of the whole endeavor is not only the result of an adequate theoretical concept but equally depends on the quality of the measurement itse...

River-Basin Politics and the Rise of Ecological and Transnational Democracy in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa

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Chris Sneddon

2008-06-01

Full Text Available In recent years, debates over 'deliberative', 'transnational' and 'ecological' democracy have proliferated, largely among scholars engaged in discussions of modernisation, globalisation and political identity. Within this broad context, scholars and practitioners of environmental governance have advanced the argument that a democratic society will produce a more environmentally conscious society. We want to make a volte-face of this argument and ask: to what extent does engagement with environmental politics and, specifically, water politics, contribute to processes of democratisation? After reviewing some of the contributions to debates over 'ecological' and 'transnational' democracy, we explore this question within the context of conflicts over river-basin development in Southeast Asia and southern Africa. We argue that there are multiple pathways to democratisation and that, in some cases, the environment as a political issue does constitute a significant element of democratisation. But notions of 'ecological' and 'transnational' democracy must embody how both 'environment' and 'the transnational', as mobilised by specific social movements in specific historical and geographical circumstances, are politically constructed.

Understanding Democracy

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Garcia, Gilberto

1998-01-01

.... Nevertheless, democracy is spreading, and today many countries are called democratic. This paper describes several countries, which are very different because of their history, culture, religion, people, education, and wealth...

Essay on legitimacy and democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patricia Kaplanova

2017-02-01

Full Text Available Purpose and Originality: The aim of the paper is to deeply analyze a concept of legitimacy. Based on the classical works of Lipset and Habermas, the paper discusses conditions, efficiency, and presumptions on which a modern democratic political system stands. Method: The paper analyzes a relationship between positivist and normative understanding of legitimacy questioning a democratic political order. By a content analysis of two main theories of legitimacy, the paper examines a sense of democratic legitimacy in modern societies. Results: A legitimacy is a pillar of any democracy. From the structuralist point of view, in societies there are three main types of crises (economic, social, political, which are present constantly and interconnected by nature and implications. Each crisis creates a specific deficit and challenge for democracy. By overcoming, a stability of democracy is strengthened which makes a (crisis of legitimacy inevitable. Society: In a time of post-truth politics and crisis of democracy, there is a lack of research dealing with a legitimacy of the democratic regime. By pointing out classical approaches to a stability of democracy, there should be elaborated a new construct of democratic legitimacy reflecting structural conditions of modern societies. This paper is trying to offer an insight into a normative understanding of this construction. Limitations / further research: A theoretical approach could be verified by an empirical research.

Efficient multiparty quantum-secret-sharing schemes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xiao Li; Deng Fuguo; Long Guilu; Pan Jianwei

2004-01-01

In this work, we generalize the quantum-secret-sharing scheme of Hillery, Buzek, and Berthiaume [Phys. Rev. A 59, 1829 (1999)] into arbitrary multiparties. Explicit expressions for the shared secret bit is given. It is shown that in the Hillery-Buzek-Berthiaume quantum-secret-sharing scheme the secret information is shared in the parity of binary strings formed by the measured outcomes of the participants. In addition, we have increased the efficiency of the quantum-secret-sharing scheme by generalizing two techniques from quantum key distribution. The favored-measuring-basis quantum-secret-sharing scheme is developed from the Lo-Chau-Ardehali technique [H. K. Lo, H. F. Chau, and M. Ardehali, e-print quant-ph/0011056] where all the participants choose their measuring-basis asymmetrically, and the measuring-basis-encrypted quantum-secret-sharing scheme is developed from the Hwang-Koh-Han technique [W. Y. Hwang, I. G. Koh, and Y. D. Han, Phys. Lett. A 244, 489 (1998)] where all participants choose their measuring basis according to a control key. Both schemes are asymptotically 100% in efficiency, hence nearly all the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states in a quantum-secret-sharing process are used to generate shared secret information

Participatory and Dialogue Democracy in U.S. Mathematics Classrooms

Science.gov (United States)

Mukhopadhyay, Shiuli

2009-01-01

Teaching math to reflect values of democracy has to begin with some consideration of how democracy is conceptualized. A review of various theories of democracy conducted by Hagen (1992) provides everyone with a good starting point as it identifies three primary forms of democracy: competitive, participatory, and dialogue. In this essay, the author…

On Adaptive vs. Non-adaptive Security of Multiparty Protocols

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Canetti, Ran; Damgård, Ivan Bjerre; Dziembowski, Stefan

2001-01-01

highlights of our results are: – - According to the definition of Dodis-Micali-Rogaway (which is set in the information-theoretic model), adaptive and non-adaptive security are equivalent. This holds for both honest-but-curious and Byzantine adversaries, and for any number of parties. – - According......Security analysis of multiparty cryptographic protocols distinguishes between two types of adversarialsettings: In the non-adaptive setting, the set of corrupted parties is chosen in advance, before the interaction begins. In the adaptive setting, the adversary chooses who to corrupt during...... the course of the computation. We study the relations between adaptive security (i.e., security in the adaptive setting) and non-adaptive security, according to two definitions and in several models of computation. While affirming some prevailing beliefs, we also obtain some unexpected results. Some...

Cosmopolitan democracy: conceptual deficits and political errors

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sérgio Costa

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Both the appeal to some universal ethics and the evocation of a global civil society constitute the core of the "cosmopolitan democracies" theories, presented as either reality data or political desideratum. The paper aims at showing that in the terms formulated by the cosmopolitan democrats both ideas rely on evolutionist presuppositions. Institutions, values, and cultural ways of life effective on societies situated in the northern hemisphere end up being regarded as both per se superior and models for general application. Against such reorganization of the world, the paper indicatively cites necessary precautions in order to have both the international cooperation of social actors and the globalisation of human rights contribute towards overcoming particularisms in the several regions, taking into consideration, at the same time, the cultural particularities of the different regional contexts.

Solving Local Violence by Cosmopolitan Democracy Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muhammad Luthfil Hakim

2016-05-01

Full Text Available The implementation of democracy intensified since the fall of the new order era has some failures. One of the factors is violence phenomena still continue in the region. This study aims to discuss the violence in the region by presenting cosmopolitan democracy as a new design of more humane democracy. In addition, this research method uses library research, because library research can understand the problem in-depth to find the pattern and recommendation from the violence problems which happens in Indonesia. This study uses Hannah Arendt observations on the phenomenon of violence. In addition, the concept of cosmopolitan democracy is referred from Daniele Archibugi, David Held, and Ulrich Beck is presented as a draft of new democracy direction which is more inclusive and humane. The result of this study discloses that the occurrence of incidence is triggered by failed implementation of the democratic system in Indonesia.

The contradictions of democracy globalization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Avramović Zoran

2006-01-01

Full Text Available The author deals with the problem of European (global democratization and not with its goals. The author defines the first group of problems as internal contradictions of modern democratic states. In addition to the existing historical-political criticisms of democratic rule, the author refers to critical analysis of democracy in John Keane’s works. According to Keane, modern democratic state gets involved in several ways in the field of free circulation of public opinion. Based on this and other analyses (Bobio, Dahl, the author concludes that in contemporary European democratic societies there also exist profound contradictions that are transferred to globalization of democracy, too. The author identifies the second problem concerning European democratization in its anthropological assumptions. With reference to Tocqueville’s book Democracy in America, the author states that American democracy man develops personality characteristics oriented to the acquisition of material goods (enrichment. The expansion of Euro-American picture of man to other democracies creates the tension between universal institutions and national cultural anthropology. The third problem concerning democracy is defined from the viewpoint of political relativism. The history of the world is the history of cultural differences. The short-term experience in European democratization proves that political relativism is not respected and that tendency to imposing Euro-American model is gaining in strength. This process endangers political identity of a nation, which becomes the source of confrontation and conflicts inside and between the states. In summary, the author suggests the solution of the problem in the spirit of political liberalism. States (or groups of states do not have the right to prescribe for other states how to define their public good, except in case they endanger other states (or in case they conduct massive killing of their own citizens.

Mathematics Education and Democracy Education

Science.gov (United States)

Çetin, Ömer Faruk

2015-01-01

Democracy is a most accepted form of government system and has a great importance for citizens by allowing them equal and active participation in common life. As its development and characteristics are important for all citizens of a country, each democratic country puts much emphasis on democracy education in its educational curricula. In recent…

Democracy and Development: The Nigerian Experience (1999-2010 ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Democracy and Development: The Nigerian Experience (1999-2010). Jebbin Maclean Felix. Abstract. This article is a contribution to the debate on democracy and development. It examines the relationship between democracy and development, using a contextual analysis of the Nigerian democratic experience. The key ...

The concept and institutions of education for democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Avramović Zoran M.

2002-01-01

Full Text Available The paper comprises three sections: (a the concepts and institutions of democracy, (b the concept of education for democracy, and (c the role of school in democratic education. The concept of 'open society' is critical to the strategy of education for democracy. In addition to general conditions for establishing and functioning of democracy, the author points to some of its basic institutions: structured social groups, political parties, leader elections. The concept of 'education' is considered from the standpoint of goals - social, national and individual. It is pointed to tolerance as a key concept of the theory of education for democracy. School, being the most prominent institution in the process of education for democracy, places student and development of his/he; democratic characteristics and capacities in the focus of its strategy. All elements of teaching: curriculum, methods teacher, student, textbook are in the function of the basic idea of democratic education - tolerance and crisscrossed influences (practicing of getting used to differences. Apart from the development and acquisition of thinking in concepts about democracy, education for democracy should encompass knowledge for life at state and social institutions, for private and public life, acquisition of national values, rational decision-making discussion. The framework of strategy in question is certainly exercising of tolerance and getting used to crisscrossed influences.

Flavor Democracy in Particle Physics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sultansoy, Saleh

2007-01-01

The flavor democracy hypothesis (or, in other words, democratic mass matrix approach) was introduced in seventies taking in mind three Standard Model (SM) families. Later, this idea was disfavored by the large value of the t-quark mass. In nineties the hypothesis was revisited assuming that extra SM families exist. According to flavor democracy the fourth SM family should exist and there are serious arguments disfavoring the fifth SM family. The fourth SM family quarks lead to essential enhancement of the Higgs boson production cross-section at hadron colliders and the Tevatron can discover the Higgs boson before the LHC, if it mass is between 140 and 200 GeV. Then, one can handle 'massless' Dirac neutrinos without see-saw mechanism. Concerning BSM physics, flavor democracy leads to several consequences: tanβ ≅ mt/mb ≅ 40 if there are three MSSM families; super-partner of the right-handed neutrino can be the LSP; relatively light E(6)-inspired isosinglet quark etc. Finally, flavor democracy may give opportunity to handle ''massless'' composite objects within preonic models

Peasantry and politics in the Athenian society. On the Aristotelian model of agrarian democracy

OpenAIRE

Julián GALLEGO

2013-01-01

The article analyzes the peasantry's situation in the Athenian polis under the condition of full citizenship. Athens has recently been recognized as a society whose democratic political organization was based on the presence of citizen agriculturists who controlled most of the land, constituted the majority of the civic body and had a decisive role in the working of the government. Under certain limits, Aristotle's ideas in the Politics with respect to the agrarian democracy are taken as elem...

Do We Need A New Constitutionalism for the European Union? An Institutional insight in the Draft Treaty

OpenAIRE

Daniela Piana

2004-01-01

It could be argued that some historical events are responsible for the recent development of the theoretical debate about the constitutionalism. The first one is the development of a transnational political order, where rules and institutions are created in a new way that seems to represent a rupture with the schemes followed in the international agreements. The second one is the end of the Cold war and the transition to constitutional democracies that has occurred in the countries that belon...

Improving the multiparty quantum secret sharing over two collective-noise channels against insider attack

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Ying; Wen, Qiao-yan; Zhu, Fu-chen

2010-01-01

The security of the multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol presented by Zhang [Z.J. Zhang, Physica A, 361 (2006) 233] is analyzed. It is shown that this protocol is vulnerable to the insider attack since eavesdropping detection is performed only when all states arrive at the last agent. We propose an attack strategy and give an improved version of the original protocol. The improved protocol is robust and has the same traits with the original one.

The Non-Instrumental Value of Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rostbøll, Christian F.

2015-01-01

rejected in this debate. But in order to understand the intrinsic value of democracy, we cannot ignore the relationship between freedom and democracy. Moreover, the freedom argument can better respond to the epistemic challenge to intrinsic accounts than can the equality argument. However, the freedom......A current debate in democratic theory concerns whether we can explain democratic legitimacy purely with reference to the intrinsic value of the public affirmation of equality, or whether we must invoke extra-democratic epistemic standards to do so. The freedom side of democracy is ignored or even...

Elementary Students' Metaphors for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Dundar, Hakan

2012-01-01

The purpose of the research was to reveal elementary 8th grade students' opinions concerning democracy with the aid of metaphors. The students were asked to produce metaphors about the concept of democracy. 140 students from 3 public schools in Ankara (Turkey) participated in the research. 55% of the students were females and 45% were males. The…

Democracy against the odds

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Seeberg, Michael

Why have a number of poor countries sustained electoral democracy against the odds? The extant literature on democracy and democratization consistently points to the importance of socioeconomic development and democratic neighboring countries, in particular, as important prerequisites for a stable...... demonstrates the enormous potential of political parties and civil society in processes of democratization. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Hvorfor opretholder en række fattige lande en demokratisk styreform imod alle odds? Demokratiforskere forventer, at et land må have et...

‘Democracy always comes first’ : Adolescents’ views on decision-making in everyday life and political democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Nieuwelink, H.; Dekker, P.; Geijsel, F.; ten Dam, G.

2016-01-01

Research shows adolescents to be positively oriented towards democracy, but little is known about what it actually means to them and what their views are on decision-making in both everyday situations and political democracy. To gain insight into these aspects of adolescents’ democratic views, we

From Opera to Real Democracy: Popular Constitutionalism and Web 2.0

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elizabeth Dale

2013-01-01

Full Text Available On March 17, 2011 the conductor Riccardo Muti stood in the orchestra pit at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and, in the presence of the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, denounced the Italian government’s cuts to funding for the arts and culture. He then invited the entire audience to join the opera’s chorus in an encore of Va’ Pensiero, the hymn of the Hebrew slaves in Nabucco, to protest the cuts. Within two days of the sing-a-long, the Italian government reversed the course it set more than ten months before and agreed to a tax that would be used to restore funds to the arts and culture budget. This article traces how and why these acts of protest in Italy developed, succeeded, and then were appropriated by transnational activists interested in encouraging popular constitutionalism. Because the entire process made considerable use of Facebook, blogs, YouTube, and Twitter, this case study simultaneously explores how a popular protest became a successful expression of popular constitutionalism, and considers how the messages of that protest evolved across a transnational public sphere that encompassed Web 2.0.

Nuclear phase-out a part of the German Constitution? On the political grammar of constitutional changes; Atomausstieg ins Grundgesetz? Zur politischen Grammatik von Verfassungsaenderungen

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gaerditz, Klaus Ferdinand

2016-07-01

The study examines whether and to what extent the simple legal effected nuclear phase-out could be safeguarded in the Basic Law, which regulatory methods would be available, the advantages and disadvantages of these and how their effects would be assessed. In addition to political and practical consequences, this also includes considerations of democracy and constitutional theory in an overall consideration, which ultimately touches the question of the regulatory function of constitutional changes. [German] Die Studie untersucht, ob bzw. inwiefern der einfachgesetzlich erfolgte Atomausstieg im Grundgesetz abgesichert werden koennte, welche Regelungstechniken hierzu zur Verfuegung stuenden, welche Vor- bzw. Nachteile diese haetten und wie deren Wirkungen zu bewerten waeren. Hierbei sind neben politisch-praktischen Folgen auch demokratie- und verfassungstheoretische Erwaegungen in eine Gesamtbetrachtung einzubeziehen, die letztlich die Frage nach der Regelungsfunktion von Verfassungsaenderungen beruehren.

Why Choice Matters: Revisiting and Comparing Measures of Democracy

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Heiko Giebler

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized by three recurrent topics of debate: (1 what is democracy, (2 what is a good measure of democracy, and (3 do our measurements of democracy register real-world developments? As the answers to those questions have been changing over time, the field of democracy measurement has adapted and reached higher levels of theoretical and methodological sophistication. In effect, the challenges facing contemporary social scientists are not only limited to the challenge of constructing a sound index of democracy. Today, they also need a profound understanding of the differences between various measures of democracy and their implications for empirical applications. The introduction outlines how the contributions to this thematic issue help scholars cope with the recurrent issues of conceptualization, measurement, and application, and concludes by identifying avenues for future research.

[Democracy and conflict in pluralist contexts: an interview with Chantal Mouffe].

Science.gov (United States)

Mouffe, Chantal; Ramos, Aura Helena; de Oliveira, Anna Luiza A R Martins; de Oliveira, Gustavo Gilson S; de Mesquita, Rui Gomes de Mattos

2014-01-01

Chantal Mouffe, along with Argentinian political theorist Ernesto Laclau (1935-2014), laid down the bases of discourse theory in 1985. She later developed her work by exploring in more detail how discourse theory formulations influence the analysis of contemporary democracies. Approaching conflict as a product of the encounter with difference, Mouffe sees it as an indelible part of the constitution of social relationships. In this encounter with the author, we seek to reflect upon certain themes and problematics that are central to her work, and upon the implications of her theory for the field of contemporary education.

Globalization, democracy, and child health in developing countries.

Science.gov (United States)

Welander, Anna; Lyttkens, Carl Hampus; Nilsson, Therese

2015-07-01

Good health is crucial for human and economic development. In particular poor health in childhood is of utmost concern since it causes irreversible damage and has implications later in life. Recent research suggests globalization is a strong force affecting adult and child health outcomes. Yet, there is much unexplained variation with respect to the globalization effect on child health, in particular in low- and middle-income countries. One factor that could explain such variation across countries is the quality of democracy. Using panel data for 70 developing countries between 1970 and 2009 this paper disentangles the relationship between globalization, democracy, and child health. Specifically the paper examines how globalization and a country's democratic status and historical experience with democracy, respectively, affect infant mortality. In line with previous research, results suggest that globalization reduces infant mortality and that the level of democracy in a country generally improves child health outcomes. Additionally, democracy matters for the size of the globalization effect on child health. If for example Côte d'Ivoire had been a democracy in the 2000-2009 period, this effect would translate into 1200 fewer infant deaths in an average year compared to the situation without democracy. We also find that nutrition is the most important mediator in the relationship. To conclude, globalization and democracy together associate with better child health in developing countries. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DEMOCRACY AND GOOD GOVERNANCE: INGREDIENTS FOR ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

status on democracy, good governance and socio-economic development. Democracy is being embraced across the globe by most civilized and ... amenities and infrastructure, employment, health, security and constant power ... based on life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and gross domestic ..... In some Asian.

The Problem of Citizens: E-Democracy for Actually Existing Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniel Kreiss

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This article argues that many contemporary e-democracy projects, particularly in the United States, have at their heart a model of atomistic, independent, rational, and general-interest citizens. As such, these projects, variously grouped under the labels of e-governance, online deliberation, open government, and civic technology, often assume a broad shared consensus about collective definitions of “public problems” that both does not exist and sidesteps debates over what these problems are and what potential solutions can and should be. Drawing on recent theories of political parties, social identity, and cultural cognition, this article argues that e-democracy efforts need to account for the fact that the citizens practitioners appeal to see themselves by default as members of social groups, and that this has implications for politics and what Jasanoff calls “civic epistemology.” Presenting the case of attempting to change Republican opinions about climate change, I argue that e-democracy initiatives should seek to foster collaboration and deliberation within , not between, parties and among partisans. To do so, e-democratic reformers need to explicitly structure the collaborative and deliberative environment so there is a range of intra-party opinions and beliefs as part of the consultative and policy-making process.

Comment on ''Secure multiparty computation with a dishonest majority via quantum means''

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Li Yanbing [State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876 (China); Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute, Beijing 100070 (China); Wen Qiaoyan; Qin Sujuan [State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876 (China)

2011-07-15

In a recent paper [K. Loukopoulos and D. E. Browne, Phys. Rev. A 81, 062336 (2010)], five schemes for secure multiparty computation utilizing the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) quantum correlation were presented, which were claimed to be secure in some kinds of security models. However, this study points out that schemes C and D2 could be attacked by corrupted parties replacing photon and exchanging classical information.

International law, constitutional law, and public support for torture

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adam S Chilton

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The human rights movement has spent considerable energy developing and promoting the adoption of both international and domestic legal prohibitions against torture. Empirical scholarship testing the effectiveness of these prohibitions using observational data, however, has produced mixed results. In this paper, we explore one possible mechanism through which these prohibitions may be effective: dampening public support for torture. Specifically, we conducted a survey experiment to explore the impact of international and constitutional law on public support for torture. We found that a bare majority of respondents in our control group support the use of torture, and that presenting respondents with arguments that this practice violates international law or constitutional law did not produce a statistically significant decrease in support. These findings are consistent with prior research suggesting, even in democracies, that legal prohibitions on torture have been ineffective.

Metaphors of Social Studies Teacher Candidates on Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Tural, Aysegül

2018-01-01

Democracy is a form of government in which principle of equality is based, human rights and freedoms are protected. In this research, it is aimed to reveal democracy perceptions of social science teacher candidates through metaphors. Towards this aim, 105 social science teacher candidates are consulted about their democracy opinions. Study is a…

Two-Cloud-Servers-Assisted Secure Outsourcing Multiparty Computation

Science.gov (United States)

Wen, Qiaoyan; Zhang, Hua; Jin, Zhengping; Li, Wenmin

2014-01-01

We focus on how to securely outsource computation task to the cloud and propose a secure outsourcing multiparty computation protocol on lattice-based encrypted data in two-cloud-servers scenario. Our main idea is to transform the outsourced data respectively encrypted by different users' public keys to the ones that are encrypted by the same two private keys of the two assisted servers so that it is feasible to operate on the transformed ciphertexts to compute an encrypted result following the function to be computed. In order to keep the privacy of the result, the two servers cooperatively produce a custom-made result for each user that is authorized to get the result so that all authorized users can recover the desired result while other unauthorized ones including the two servers cannot. Compared with previous research, our protocol is completely noninteractive between any users, and both of the computation and the communication complexities of each user in our solution are independent of the computing function. PMID:24982949

Two-cloud-servers-assisted secure outsourcing multiparty computation.

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Yi; Wen, Qiaoyan; Zhang, Yudong; Zhang, Hua; Jin, Zhengping; Li, Wenmin

2014-01-01

We focus on how to securely outsource computation task to the cloud and propose a secure outsourcing multiparty computation protocol on lattice-based encrypted data in two-cloud-servers scenario. Our main idea is to transform the outsourced data respectively encrypted by different users' public keys to the ones that are encrypted by the same two private keys of the two assisted servers so that it is feasible to operate on the transformed ciphertexts to compute an encrypted result following the function to be computed. In order to keep the privacy of the result, the two servers cooperatively produce a custom-made result for each user that is authorized to get the result so that all authorized users can recover the desired result while other unauthorized ones including the two servers cannot. Compared with previous research, our protocol is completely noninteractive between any users, and both of the computation and the communication complexities of each user in our solution are independent of the computing function.

Media Education and the Practice of Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robert Ferguson

2006-02-01

Full Text Available They do say that all ideas have their time, and in media education it seems that it is the time for democracy. Books and papers begin to appear and there are conferences with democracy in their titles to replace a focus on the postmodern, or identity. There seems to be a general consensus that democracy is a ‹good thing›. But, as with most other significant terms which hold centre stage for a while, they need to be interrogated with some care. For some more critical educators democracy takes its place alongside Gandhi’s comment when asked about Western Civilisation – he said it would be a good idea. The ‹practice› of democracy takes on a poignant, ironic, desperate or cynical cloak in the light of recent world events and the rise of terrorism as a political weapon. It depends where you stand. Democracy is not something that thrills the hearts and minds of the vast majority of citizens who live in nations who declare themselves to be democratic. Apathy and cynicism work together against democratic growth. But so do governments whose declared democratic aims pay scant attention to the people they are supposed to represent. And then there are the ‹democratic› exercises which supposedly involve the people in a conversation (‹we are listening› they say which results in the status quo being implemented by politicians with morally superior physiognomies. After all, they say, we did ask your opinions. We did ask you to participate. And so democracy staggers from crisis to disaster...

Computer-aided proofs for multiparty computation with active security

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Haagh, Helene; Karbyshev, Aleksandr; Oechsner, Sabine

2018-01-01

Secure multi-party computation (MPC) is a general cryptographic technique that allows distrusting parties to compute a function of their individual inputs, while only revealing the output of the function. It has found applications in areas such as auctioning, email filtering, and secure...... teleconference. Given its importance, it is crucial that the protocols are specified and implemented correctly. In the programming language community it has become good practice to use computer proof assistants to verify correctness proofs. In the field of cryptography, EasyCrypt is the state of the art proof...... public-key encryption, signatures, garbled circuits and differential privacy. Here we show for the first time that it can also be used to prove security of MPC against a malicious adversary. We formalize additive and replicated secret sharing schemes and apply them to Maurer's MPC protocol for secure...

Redefining Democracy for the Modern State.

Science.gov (United States)

Rahe, Paul A.

1992-01-01

Draws distinctions between classical and modern concepts of democracy. Contrasts Pythagoras' dislike of factions with Madison's support for economic differentiation and religious toleration. Discusses Aristotle's and Noah Webster's ideas on addressing class tensions. Examines early U.S. theorists' suspicions of direct democracy and support for…

Malawi's Traditional Leadership and Democracy Consolidation ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

is that the tendency to brand traditional leadership as undemocratic masks debate on its great potential for the promotion of democracy. The article contends that efforts towards democracy consolidation require foregoing harmonious power relations and linkages between traditional leaders and elected local governments; ...

Duality and 'particle' democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Castellani, Elena

2017-08-01

Weak/strong duality is usually accompanied by what seems a puzzling ontological feature: the fact that under this kind of duality what is viewed as 'elementary' in one description gets mapped to what is viewed as 'composite' in the dual description. This paper investigates the meaning of this apparent 'particle democracy', as it has been called, by adopting an historical approach. The aim is to clarify the nature of the correspondence between 'dual particles' in the light of a historical analysis of the developments of the idea of weak/strong duality, starting with Dirac's electric-magnetic duality and its successive generalizations in the context of (Abelian and non-Abelian) field theory, to arrive at its first extension to string theory. This analysis is then used as evidential basis for discussing the 'elementary/composite' divide and, after taking another historical detour by analyzing an instructive analogy case (DHS duality and related nuclear democracy), drawing some conclusions on the particle-democracy issue.

A note on Wang et al's attack on Zhang et al's multiparty quantum secret sharing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gao Gan

2012-01-01

Recently, Wang et al (2008 Phys. Lett. A 373 65) proposed an attack on Zhang et al's (2007 Opt. Commun. 269 418) multiparty quantum secret sharing scheme, in which the first and the last agent are reported to be able to cooperatively eavesdrop on all the secret messages without being detected. In this paper, we show that in Wang et al's attack, on average no more than half the secret messages can be eavesdropped. (paper)

Democracy, political participation and good governance in Nigeria

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dare E. Arowolo

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The practice of democracy in Nigeria over a decade ago has not yielded much needed good governance. This is because democracy is practiced in such a way that responsible and competent people are scared away. Scholars and keen observers have attempted at unraveling the factors militating against translating democracy into good governance. The paper revealed that democratisation in Nigeria is pervaded by electoral violence, manipulation of election results and political participation constraints. These identified challenges have made it impossible to attain consolidated democracy that can, in turn, facilitate good governance. Democracy is a catalyst for accountability, transparency and responsive government which brings about good governance. The paper insisted that governance collapse in Nigeria is reflexive of the perfunctory role of the political actors and it adopted elite theory to reinforce this argument. The paper adopted content analysis as a means of data gathering. It dwelt extensively on the synergy between democracy, political participation and good governance but queried the artificial gulf between them in Nigeria. It concluded by putting forth viable and pragmatic way forward.

Popular democracy and waste management

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wallis, L.R.

1986-01-01

The US has moved from representative democracy to popular democracy and public scrutiny is unrelenting. Any hope of success on their part in resolving the nuclear waste question hinges on their ability to condition themselves to operate in a popular democracy environment. Those opposed to the siting of high- and low-level waste repositories have already developed a set of recurring themes: (1) the siting criteria are fatally flawed; (2) the criteria are not adequate; (3) the process is driven by politics not science; (4) unrealistic deadlines lead to dangerous shortcuts; (5) transportation experience is lacking; (6) the scientific community does not really know how to dispose of the wastes. They must continue to tell the public that if science has brought us problems, then the answer can be only more knowledge - not less. Failure by their profession to recognize that popular democracy is a fact and that nuclear issues need to be addressed in humanistic terms raises the question of whether America is philosophically suited for the expanded use of nuclear power in the future - or for that matter for leadership in the world of tomorrow

Democracy as a social technology on schools

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kofod, Kasper

2009-01-01

" democracy. The democratic influence in schools thus spans from "big" parliamentary democracy to small participatoruy democracy - a dichotomy schooll leadership must maneuvre within using democratic procedures and leadership as social technologies. This article argues that a positive coinnectiion exists...... between strong leadership and having wello-functioning democratic processes in schools and the introduction of tests, quality reports and these approaches does not weaken democratic processes in schools. This connection is nonetheless changing the logics of the state, market, and the civil society vectors.......On a formal level, the influence og "big" parlamentary democracy is enhanced because parliamentary control in individual schools has become stronger; and the formal democratic influence of parents has been strengthned by their membership on school boards, the latter being an example of "small...

How Terrorism Affects Attitudes toward Democracy: Tunisia in 2015.

Science.gov (United States)

Andersen, Robert; Brym, Robert

2017-11-01

Tunisia is the only country that emerged from the Arab Spring as a democracy. However, Tunisian democracy is threatened by political divisions, economic problems, and the threat of terrorist attacks. We shed light on Tunisia's democratic prospects by examining (1) the degree to which major terrorist attacks in 2015 influenced Tunisian public opinion on democracy and (2) the extent to which preference for a democratic system affected opinions on the prospects for democracy in Tunisia. We use data from three waves of a nationwide survey conducted just before and just after Tunisia's first major terrorist attack, and just after the country's second major terrorist attack. We demonstrate that after the attacks the Tunisian public became less favourable toward democracy and less optimistic that Tunisia would soon be ready for it. Such scepticism was widespread, affecting people who preferred democracy as much as those who did not. We conclude that the prospects for Tunisian democracy are more precarious than is sometimes assumed. © 2017 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie.

Improvement of "Novel Multiparty Quantum Key Agreement Protocol with GHZ States"

Science.gov (United States)

Gu, Jun; Hwang, Tzonelih

2017-10-01

Quantum key agreement (QKA) protocol is a method for negotiating a fair and secure key among mutually untrusted participants. Recently, Xu et al. (Quantum Inf. Process. 13:2587-2594, 2014) proposed a multi-party QKA protocol based on Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. However, this study points out that Xu et al.'s protocol cannot provide the fairness property. That is, the last involved participant in the protocol can manipulate the final shared secret key without being detected by the other participants. Moreover, according to Yu et al.'s research (2015), Xu et al.'s protocol cannot avoid the public discussion attack too. To avoid these weaknesses, an improved QKA protocol is proposed.

Anti-discrimination Philosophy and the Decline of Post-capitalist Democracies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dan Pavel

2012-04-01

Full Text Available The author is trying to explain the contrasts existing between the expanding universe of anti-discrimination sanctions and the decline in legitimacy of democracy. The declining legitimacy affects both consolidated democracies, and newborn democracies. Inequality in the USA, but also at global level is illustrated with relevant statistics. The convergence between the crisis of democracy and the financial and economic global crisis is a major social and political threat. At the global level, after the Arab Spring, the third wave of democratization continued, while the quality of democracy substantially diminished. In the newborn Islamic democracies, discrimination against women, Christians, Jews, gay & lesbians, etc. continued, leading to arson, torture and killings.

The South African Constitution requires men to be feminist

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

H.P.P. Lótter

2000-03-01

Full Text Available Can a man be a feminist? If so, what would it mean? I want to participate in a dialogue between women and men on how to accommodate women's moral concerns. I propose that the fundamental values of justice embodied in the South African constitutional democracy require men to be feminist. These values provide the best safeguard of the important interests and values of both women and men. Men who accept these values can support the main concerns of feminism. The implications of the argument in this article range from public issues to the most private aspects of marriage.

Is There Muslim Exceptionalism in Democracy Research?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hariri, Jacob Gerner

to and between the 16th and 18th centuries are relatively less democratic today. The negative effect of early statehood on current levels of democracy is mediated by European colonization and settlement: Europeans were less likely to colonize and settle in territories with more developed state institutions......, also, to alternative theories of the causes and correlates of democracy. This paper presents evidence against the notion of Muslim exceptionalism in democracy research. Thus, outside the European continent, territories that were governed earlier and more consistently by state organizations up...... and were therefore less likely to bring nascent legalistic and representative institutions to these territories. When we remove the autocratic legacy of early statehood and the influence of European settlement, there is nothing signicantly negative about the degree of democracy in Muslim-majority countries....

Are coups good for democracy?

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George Derpanopoulos

2016-02-01

Full Text Available A number of recent studies argue that coups can help usher in democracy. We examine this relationship empirically by looking at the political regimes that follow coups in autocracies, as well as the level of repression against citizens. We find that, though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence.

Conceptual Foundations Of Deliberative Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Елизавета Васильевна Золотарева

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The article is dedicated to the analysis of theoretical foundations of deliberative model of democracy that is formed on the basis of synthesis of traditionally opposing approaches to research of democracy — liberal political philosophy (J. Rawls and critical social theory (J. Habermas. Special attention is paid to the problems of testing of normative requirements to the public discourse as the basis of deliberative process.

Participatory democracy and Hillary Clinton’s marginalized fandom

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Abigail De Kosnik

2008-09-01

Full Text Available After the drawn-out, heated contest for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and Senator Obama's victory over Senator Clinton, a segment of Clinton's supporters are threatening to leave the party rather than fall in line behind the nominee. This essay argues that the battle between Clinton's and Obama's followers is best understood as a war between fan bases, with Obama enthusiasts constituting as the dominant fandom and Clinton voters occupying the position of marginalized fandom. Marginalized fandoms tend to blame the opposing fan base, intermediaries, and The Powers That Be for their fan campaigns' losses, and Clinton's fans are adhering to this pattern. However, the Clinton marginalized fandom's complaints can be regarded as valuable critiques that, if noted rather than dismissed, could greatly strengthen participatory democracy in the United States.

Democracy : Development and Improvement - The Role of Participation and Deliberation

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Rubens Becak

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Despite being a relatively recent phenomenon, democracy seems to have been raised to the level of a ubiquitous system so its existence and enshrinement are truly understood as a postulate. In this sense it’s very important to understand it’s evolution from the advent of the Modernity specially to understand how the model evolved adopting the representation by the political parties. Despite its qualities, the criticism about the model especially focused on the pretense lack of legitimacy, always persisted. This, in most cases, is done in order to improve its aim approaching the collective ideal. In this evolutionary bias is that we observe the construction of alternative models - we prefer to see as complementary to traditional representative by the parties - especially with the adoption of practices of direct democracy conducting to a system called semi- direct one. This is adopted by the current Brazilian Constitution with the prediction of the use of the figures of the plebiscite, referendum and popular initiative, does not seem to have exhausted the questioning and criticism. Rather these have been increased in recent decades flaring up in the nurture and coming to advocate the adoption of different experiences. These practices with mechanisms called participatory and deliberative, has the abili- ty to seek eventual democratic optimization.

Secure multi-party quantum summation based on quantum Fourier transform

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Hui-Yi; Ye, Tian-Yu

2018-06-01

In this paper, we propose a novel secure multi-party quantum summation protocol based on quantum Fourier transform, where the traveling particles are transmitted in a tree-type mode. The party who prepares the initial quantum states is assumed to be semi-honest, which means that she may misbehave on her own but will not conspire with anyone. The proposed protocol can resist both the outside attacks and the participant attacks. Especially, one party cannot obtain other parties' private integer strings; and it is secure for the colluding attack performed by at most n - 2 parties, where n is the number of parties. In addition, the proposed protocol calculates the addition of modulo d and implements the calculation of addition in a secret-by-secret way rather than a bit-by-bit way.

"Views of democracy and peace” inequality, minorities and radical democracy

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TizianoTelleschi

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Democracy is a moral and practical system conveying living proximity, including definition of love-AGAPE, conflict, inequality, power. First we highlight “what it is” love and “what it is” power. Then, in order to overcome inequality weapply the love theory to an acknowledgment theory to figure out the mediator figure, that is able to build a social space where love-AGAPE may thrive and power may be restored to its relational nature, that is negotiable. From this point we go on analyzing the distributed power (horizontal. At last, thank to A. Gramsci’s hegemony notion, we point out the ideal of radical democracy as the most fertile along the others, to which a common action from different types of qualified mediators should tend.

Education for Deliberative Democracy: A Typology of Classroom Discussions

Science.gov (United States)

Samuelsson, Martin

2016-01-01

The theory of deliberative democracy places public deliberations at the heart of democracy. In order to participate in democratic deliberations, citizens need certain skills, attitudes, and values. Within the field of education for deliberative democracy, it is assumed that these are learned through participation in democratic deliberation. Thus,…

Inventions and developments of democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jakobsen, Uffe

2010-01-01

In traditional approaches to the history of political ideas, the history of democracy is uniformly studied concerning the point of departure, selection of canonical texts, etc. The paper introduces the Koselleckian conceptual history approach (Begriffsgeschichte) and the principle of a broader...... selection of texts than in the traditional history of ideas to provide a fuller account of usages of the concept, thereby opening up for alternative conceptions of the inventions and development of democracy....

Policy evaluation and democracy: Do they fit?

Science.gov (United States)

Sager, Fritz

2017-08-05

The papers assembled in this special issue shed light on the question of the interrelation between democracy and policy evaluation by discussing research on the use of evaluations in democratic processes. The collection makes a case for a stronger presence of evaluation in democracy beyond expert utilization. Parliamentarians prove to be more aquainted with evaluations than expected and the inclusion of evaluations in policy arguments increases the deliberative quality of democratic campaigns. In sum, evaluation and democracy turn out to be well compatible after all. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Happy Gardener: on populism, democracy and specters

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Julián A. Melo

2015-07-01

Full Text Available The present text aims to retake several aspects and debates concerning the relation between populism and democracy. We will expound the main ideas by authors such as Margaret Canovan, Benjamín Arditi and Sebastián Barros in order to rethink the bonds between both terms. We will try not to take populism and democracy as antithetical poles in communitary political associations, since we are interested in pointing out how the ideas of shadow and specter have been crucial in the thought of these authors. Along with this reflection we seek to revisit several discursive keys of the experience of first Peronism in twentieth-century Argentina, just to investigate the ways in which the logic of Peronist populism rethought democracy and set it as a central element of the identity that it claimed to embody. Thus, we think that may be interesting not just to think populism as a specter of democracy but also to think democracy as a specter of populism.

Membership ballots and the value of intra-party democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Wolkenstein, Fabio

2016-01-01

On the face of it, membership ballots present a clear case in which intra- party democracy comes into collision with core principles of representative democracy: they weaken the autonomy of representatives, and undermine the authority of the voters. In this article, I investigate whether this is ......On the face of it, membership ballots present a clear case in which intra- party democracy comes into collision with core principles of representative democracy: they weaken the autonomy of representatives, and undermine the authority of the voters. In this article, I investigate whether...

Just Democracy. A Radical Assessment.

OpenAIRE

Jacquemain, Marc

2012-01-01

This paper is a tentative assessment of the Rawls-Machiavelli program by Philippe Van Paris, who proposes that justice is the main goal of political action (in a Rawlsian perspective) and democracy is only instrumental (the Machiavellian part of the program). The paper adresses three questions to the proposal of Philippe Van Paris : 1) Can democracy be properly defined without a condition of public debate ? 2) Don't "realistic politics" underestimate the margin of possibility we have to chang...

Power and democracy in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jørgen Goul; Jørgensen, Torben Beck; Valgårda, Signild

In 1997, the Danish Parliament decided to launch a power study, officially An Analysis of Democracy and Power in Denmark. A steering committee consisting of five independent researchers was assigned responsibility for the project. The Steering Committee has gathered the overall conclusions from...... the numerous projects under the Power Study, and this book is a short presentation of these conclusions.The main focus of the book is the state of democracy in Denmark at the dawn of the 21st century. How has democracy fared, has the development made things better or worse, and to which extent does......, and the political institutions show considerable democratic robustness. However, not everything has gone or is going well. There are still pronounced social divisions in Danish society, although their nature has changed somewhat. The ideal of an informed public debate does not always enjoy the best conditions...

Improving school governance through participative democracy and the law

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Marius H Smit

2011-01-01

Full Text Available There is an inextricable link between democracy, education and the law. After 15 yearsofconstitutional democracy, the alarming percentage of dysfunctional schools raises questions about the efficacy of the system of local school governance. We report on the findings of quantitative and qualitative research on the democratisation of schools and the education system in North-West Province. Several undemocratic features are attributable to systemic weaknesses of traditional models of democracy as well as the misapplication of democratic and legal principles. The findings of the qualitative study confirmed that parents often misconceive participatory democracy for political democracy and misunderstand the role of the school governing body to be a political forum. Despite the shortcomings, the majority of the respondents agreed that parental participation improves school effectiveness and that the decentralised model of local school governance should continue. Recommendations to effect the inculcation of substantive democratic knowledge, values and attitudes into school governance are based on theory of deliberative democracy and principles of responsiveness, accountability and justification of decisions through rational discourse.

Two-Cloud-Servers-Assisted Secure Outsourcing Multiparty Computation

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Yi Sun

2014-01-01

Full Text Available We focus on how to securely outsource computation task to the cloud and propose a secure outsourcing multiparty computation protocol on lattice-based encrypted data in two-cloud-servers scenario. Our main idea is to transform the outsourced data respectively encrypted by different users’ public keys to the ones that are encrypted by the same two private keys of the two assisted servers so that it is feasible to operate on the transformed ciphertexts to compute an encrypted result following the function to be computed. In order to keep the privacy of the result, the two servers cooperatively produce a custom-made result for each user that is authorized to get the result so that all authorized users can recover the desired result while other unauthorized ones including the two servers cannot. Compared with previous research, our protocol is completely noninteractive between any users, and both of the computation and the communication complexities of each user in our solution are independent of the computing function.

Democracy, Corruption and the Politics of Spirits in Contemporary Indonesia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bubandt, Nils Ole

Indonesia has been an electoral democracy for more than a decade, and yet the political landscape of the world’s third-largest democracy is as complex and enigmatic as ever. Indonesia is simultaneous a country that has achieved a successful transition to democracy and a flawed, illiberal......, and predatory democracy. This book provides a portrait of Indonesia’s contradictory democracy through a series of biographical accounts of political entrepreneurs, from the political ‘periphery’ of North Maluku and the ‘political centre’ of East Java respectively. Each biographical account is focused on one...... contentious area of democracy in Indonesia – elections, corruption, decentralization, and regional representation. The chapters explore the intimate ways in which the political world and the spirit world are entangled. The core argument of the book is that Indonesia’s seemingly peculiar problems...

A DEMOCRACIA E O TERCEIRO SETOR NA ATUALIDADE: HISTÓRICO E REFLEXOS ATUAIS / DEMOCRACY AND THE CURRENT THIRD SECTOR: HISTORICAL AND CURRENT REFLECTIONS

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José Eduardo Sabo Paes

2017-04-01

Full Text Available This article aims at analyzing the current role of civil society organized in improving the democratic setup of the Brazilian State. To this end, it has been shown through a literature review and application of the hypothetical deductive method, the evolution and the current application of the concepts of Democracy and Third Sector. As a specific objective it was conceptually demonstrated what democracy stand for, its function today, collating classic and current authors. The theoretical construction of the classic constitutional paradigms and the need for realization of the democratic rule of law now has been shown. The concepts of the Third Sector and its function of acting as an effective instrument of social change were also analyzed. Finally, it is concluded that the third sector is an instrument that seeks the realization of current Brazilian democracy, besides having a role of service provider that would imminently be a responsibility from the State.

The Internet and Democracy: Global Catalyst or Democratic Dud?

Science.gov (United States)

Best, Michael L.; Wade, Keegan W.

2009-01-01

In this study, we explore the global effect of the Internet on democracy over the period of 1992 to 2002 by observing the relationships between measures related to democracy and Internet prevalence. Our findings suggest that while Internet usage was not a very powerful predictor of democracy when examining full panel data from 1992 to 2002, it was…

Direct Democracy in Local Politics in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svensson, Palle

2007-01-01

Elements of  direct democracy at the local level does exist in Denmark, but it is little known, because no formal rules regulate this aspect of political life, because results from popular initiatives and referendums are not recorded in official statistics, and because few systematic analyses have...... been published. This paper, accordingly, has an explorative nature and asks two basic questions: What is the current state of direct democracy at the local level in Denmark, and what are the prospects for a further development of direct democracy at the local level in Denmark? The paper is based...

Internet and Democracy: Is the Internet an Important Predictor for Physical Education Teacher Candidates' Attitudes towards Democracy?

Science.gov (United States)

Ünlü, Hüseyin

2017-01-01

Today, in the digital age, the Internet usage is common among university students. The Internet is also an important platform for actively participating in democracy. This study explores physical education (PE) candidate teachers' attitudes toward the Internet and democracy. It also explores whether the Internet is an important predictor for…

Theoretical Models of Deliberative Democracy: A Critical Analysis

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Tutui Viorel

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract: My paper focuses on presenting and analyzing some of the most important theoretical models of deliberative democracy and to emphasize their limits. Firstly, I will mention James Fishkin‟s account of deliberative democracy and its relations with other democratic models. He differentiates between four democratic theories: competitive democracy, elite deliberation, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy. Each of these theories makes an explicit commitment to two of the following four “principles”: political equality, participation, deliberation, nontyranny. Deliberative democracy is committed to political equality and deliberation. Secondly, I will present Philip Pettit‟s view concerning the main constraints of deliberative democracy: the inclusion constraint, the judgmental constraint and the dialogical constraint. Thirdly, I will refer to Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson‟s conception regarding the “requirements” or characteristics of deliberative democracy: the reason-giving requirement, the accessibility of reasons, the binding character of the decisions and the dynamic nature of the deliberative process. Finally, I will discuss Joshua Cohen‟s “ideal deliberative procedure” which has the following features: it is free, reasoned, the parties are substantively equal and the procedure aims to arrive at rationally motivated consensus. After presenting these models I will provide a critical analysis of each one of them with the purpose of revealing their virtues and limits. I will make some suggestions in order to combine the virtues of these models, to transcend their limitations and to offer a more systematical account of deliberative democracy. In the next four sections I will take into consideration four main strategies for combining political and epistemic values (“optimistic”, “deliberative”, “democratic” and “pragmatic” and the main objections they have to face. In the concluding section

Populisms and liberal democracy – business as usual?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thompson, Grahame Frederick

2017-01-01

Populism is often thought to mark a sharp break with liberal democracy. But to what extent is this the case? In this contribution the connections between populism and liberal democracy are sketched in the context of several areas where discussions about populisms have stressed their discontinuity...... in these relationships. The contribution ends with a discussion of how it might be possible to defend liberal democracy from a non-liberal position in the face of the critique from populisms....

MIRA: internet, democracy and participation. New technologies and re-connection of the citizen

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Leydi Johanna Posada Amaya

2011-06-01

Full Text Available The deficit in the construction and consolidation of the Democratic Participation of citizens and, therefore, its continuos and constant distancing of the politics and politic affairs has led public institutions and political parties to own the tools that the Technologies of Communication offer with the main purpose of re-connecting the electorate with their representatives. The case study of the Movimiento Independiente de Renovación Absoluta (MIRA deals with identifying the type of participation and democracy that has constituted thanks to the tools offered by the Information and Comunication Tecnologies (TIC available in its web page.

Science is a gateway for democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Jaoua, Mohamed

2014-06-01

The Arab Spring of 2011 has highlighted an unprecedent fact in the region: it was the young and educated population who established the spearheading of change, and led their countries to democracy. In this paper, we try to analyze how science has been a key factor in these moves, in Tunisia as well as in Egypt, and how it can help to anchor democracy in these countries.

Reaching beyond Democracy in Educational Policy Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Patel, Leigh

2016-01-01

Educational policy analyses have tended toward either the impact of policies on student achievement or the furthering of progressive ideals, regularly theorized through concepts of democracy. In this theoretical essay, I suggest that democracy has become a vehicle for cauterized projects of individualized and contingent state status rather than…

Democracy, Participation and Citizenship : A Fundamental Value Trídua to Tutela Legal Environment Ecologically Balanced in Iberoamericano Law

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Greice Patrícia Fuller

2016-06-01

Full Text Available This study aims to analyze the triad and conceptual discussions related among democracy, participation and citizenship in front of an ecologically balanced environment, enshrining the idea that their definitions include multifaceted aspects, interrelated, interdependent and indispensable for the legal protection by itself. The development topic begins with the concept of democracy (equal opportunities in its different aspect to be submitted in the environmental context; subsequently the study referred to in a logical and sequential order the issue with regard to the participation of the environment, characterized as an essential factor of democracy; and also encompass to the right of information, and the right to defense plans, projects and environmental programs as part of the collective. It’s means as an important guide for the practice of citizenship, which it’s one of the constitutional foundations, of principle for dignity of the human person, and the responsibility that every human being possesses. In this range, and finally, the study raises the question about the environmental governance as a measurement of instrumentation, the participation and citizenship in a democratic state with rule of law.

Technologies of democracy: experiments and demonstrations.

Science.gov (United States)

Laurent, Brice

2011-12-01

Technologies of democracy are instruments based on material apparatus, social practices and expert knowledge that organize the participation of various publics in the definition and treatment of public problems. Using three examples related to the engagement of publics in nanotechnology in France (a citizen conference, a series of public meetings, and an industrial design process), the paper argues that Science and Technology Studies provide useful tools and methods for the analysis of technologies of democracy. Operations of experiments and public demonstrations can be described, as well as controversies about technologies of democracy giving rise to counter-experiments and counter-demonstrations. The political value of the analysis of public engagement lies in the description of processes of stabilization of democratic orders and in the display of potential alternative political arrangements.

CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER, NATIONAL DEFENSE AND CI IL MILITARY RELATIONS

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Miguel Navarro Meza

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Since the beginning of its independent life, the several constitutions of Chile have included concepts related ith defence, sovereignty and national security. At the same time, those constitutional texts have recognized the existence of the armed organizations of the State, under the generic name of Public Force and have addressed their relation ith the political authorities, both ith the Executive and Congress. his has not been a permanent process. n the contrary, it has suffered upheavals and bac steps, but the general path has been clear and progressive. For one thing, the norms related to the armed forces have been, in comparative terms, more thoroughly developed than those referring to defence, sovereignty and national security. hen, from the 1833 Constitution, the basic elements of the relations bet een the political authorities and the military have evolved so as to ensure a genuine civilian control over the military, in line ith contemporary theories of civilDmilitary relations. he ay in hich the 1980 Constitution addresses national security and defence and its provisions that recognize the existence of the armed forces, their missions and roles and that regulate the ay in hich they relate to the political authorities, are the result of a progressive development starting ith the Provisional Constitution of 1811 up to present times, and they are completely in line ith current theories about civilDmilitary relations in democracy.

Participatory Democracy in Local School Districts: Fact or Fiction, Boon or Bane?

Science.gov (United States)

Hatley, Richard V.

1976-01-01

Discusses the viability of participatory democracy and representative democracy for educational decision-making and argues that pure representative democracy would be preferable to the combination of participatory and representative democracy that now predominates. (Available from the Kansas Association of School Boards, 825 Western, Topeka, KS…

Dewey versus "Dewey" on Democracy and Education

Science.gov (United States)

van der Ploeg, Piet

2016-01-01

In the literature on citizenship education, frequent references are made to Dewey. However, educationalists do not always interpret him correctly. To provide some counterbalance, I explain Dewey's views on education and democracy. I base this, not only on "Democracy and Education", but also on 17 articles that Dewey wrote after…

Re-Thinking Normative Democracy and the Political Economy of Education

Science.gov (United States)

Carr, Paul R.

2010-01-01

Normative thinking around democracy often emphasizes the supremacy of electoral politics, underplaying the salience of education as a defining feature to produce a more meaningful, engaged, inclusive form of democracy. Critical pedagogy can be an extremely useful, illuminating and transformative means and process of deconstructing how democracy is…

Devouring the Other: Democracy in Music Education

Science.gov (United States)

Gould, Elizabeth

2008-01-01

In this essay, the author builds on Val Plumwood's (1993, p. 192) notion of "devouring the other" to address fundamental problems of social justice and difference in liberal democracies and music education. The problem with liberal democracies is that they assimilate (devour) difference; consensual treatment of its citizens is predicated on the…

Latin American intra-party democracy

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Aldo Adrián Martínez Hernández

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Research proposes to determine the level of internal democracy of political parties in Latin America from perception of its members, allowing the creation of an index that has parameters for the measurement and comparison of the parties according to its democratic features. At the same time, research supports designing a profile of the parties by subjecting to analysis the relationship between ideology and internal democracy, stressing that despite the differences between left and right, parties in Latin America do not have dichotomous democratic features, while maintaining low levels despite their ideological location.

Jurisdiction Size and Local Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lassen, David Dreyer; Serritslew, Søren

2011-01-01

and problems of endogeneity. We focus on internal political efficacy, a psychological condition that many see as necessary for high-quality participatory democracy. We identify a quasiexperiment, a large-scale municipal reform in Denmark, which allows us to estimate a causal effect of jurisdiction size......Optimal jurisdiction size is a cornerstone of government design. A strong tradition in political thought argues that democracy thrives in smaller jurisdictions, but existing studies of the effects of jurisdiction size, mostly cross-sectional in nature, yield ambiguous results due to sorting effects...

"Democracy Will Not Fall from the Sky." A Comparative Study of Teacher Education Students' Perceptions of Democracy in Two Neo-Liberal Societies: Argentina and Australia

Science.gov (United States)

Zyngier, David; Traverso, María Delia; Murriello, Adriana

2015-01-01

This paper compares and contrasts pre-service teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about democracy in Argentina and Australia. While there are many important studies of how school students understand democracy and democratic participation, few have studied what teachers, and especially pre-service teachers, think about democracy. This paper uses a mixed…

Multi-party Semi-quantum Key Agreement with Delegating Quantum Computation

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Wen-Jie; Chen, Zhen-Yu; Ji, Sai; Wang, Hai-Bin; Zhang, Jun

2017-10-01

A multi-party semi-quantum key agreement (SQKA) protocol based on delegating quantum computation (DQC) model is proposed by taking Bell states as quantum resources. In the proposed protocol, the participants only need the ability of accessing quantum channel and preparing single photons {|0〉, |1〉, |+〉, |-〉}, while the complicated quantum operations, such as the unitary operations and Bell measurement, will be delegated to the remote quantum center. Compared with previous quantum key agreement protocols, this client-server model is more feasible in the early days of the emergence of quantum computers. In order to prevent the attacks from outside eavesdroppers, inner participants and quantum center, two single photon sequences are randomly inserted into Bell states: the first sequence is used to perform the quantum channel detection, while the second is applied to disorder the positions of message qubits, which guarantees the security of the protocol.

Symmetric multiparty-controlled teleportation of an arbitrary two-particle entanglement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Deng Fuguo; Zhou Hongyu; Li Chunyan; Wang Yan; Li Yansong

2005-01-01

We present a way for symmetric multiparty-controlled teleportation of an arbitrary two-particle entangled state based on Bell-basis measurements by using two Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, i.e., a sender transmits an arbitrary two-particle entangled state to a distant receiver, an arbitrary one of the n+1 agents, via the control of the others in a network. It will be shown that the outcomes in the cases that n is odd or is even are different in principle as the receiver has to perform a controlled-NOT operation on his particles for reconstructing the original arbitrary entangled state in addition to some local unitary operations in the former. Also we discuss the applications of this controlled teleporation for quantum secret sharing of classical and quantum information. As all the instances can be used to carry useful information, its efficiency for qubit approaches the maximal value

How do South Africans understand Democracy and Christianity ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The average South African is often seen as Christian and as supporting democracy, but research suggests many of the fundamentals of democracy and Christianity are clearly not accepted unconditionally. Africa Insight Vol.34(2/3) 2004: 16-22 ...

LAW DEMOCRACY & DEVELOPMENT

African Journals Online (AJOL)

HP27975994114

the routine of daily business”.21 In the Court's view, this is so because, in a ..... tendency to be disruptive of deliberative processes and to rely on slogans and ... of a deliberative model of democracy for understandings of fundamental rights.

Flavour democracy and the lepton-quark hierarchy

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fritzsch, H.; Muenchen Univ.; Plankl, J.

1990-01-01

The mass hierarchy of the leptons and quarks is interpreted as a consequence of a coherent state phenomenon ('flavour democracy'). It is emphasized that particular forms of the mass matrices can arise from the coherent state basis. The violations of the 'flavour democracy' turn out to be relatively large. Numerical examples are presented. (orig.)

An Opportunity for Reflection – A Special Issue on “The Constitution of Canada: History, Evolution, Influence and Reform”

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Martinico Giuseppe

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Canada is and will for the foreseeable future be a peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy whose Constitution Act, 1867, now 150 years old as of 2017, has become a model for the modern world. The Constitution of Canada has exerted considerable influence on other countries, particularly since the coming into force of its Constitution Act, 1982, which included the celebrated Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Just as Canada drew from foreign and international experiences in drafting its Charter, the world has learned a great deal from Canada, not only as to rights protections but also as to the separation of powers, the judicial function, and the structure of government.

Philosophical Foundations for Democracy: A Ukrainian Perspective

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Yuriy Myelkov

2009-07-01

Full Text Available The article intends to conduct a philosophical analysis of democracy as it is presented by democratization processes in societies under globalization. Turbulent political life or contemporary Ukraine with its recent ‘revolution’ provides an excellent example of such a process. The authors demonstrate that the processes in question could be denoted as rather manipulation and political technologies than democratic transition. They argue that democracy can only be understood correctly as the self-organization of society composed of free and conscious human personalities. They show that personality as the subject of democracy, opposed to crowds led by contemporary demagogues, is the only possibility to achieve real changes for a better society.

Democracy as the Rule of Nobody. Does It Make Sense Today?

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Tonči Kursar

2012-01-01

Full Text Available I would like to contribute to the ongoing debate on democracy by discussing the notion of the rule of nobody. I first address Rosanvallon's theory of counter-democracy and Keane's concept of monitory democracy. Keane writes about 'monitory democracy' not only as a new phase in the development of democracy on a global scale, but primarily as an abolishment of all domination in human relations. His idea that in a monitory democracy 'no body rules', has been criticized by John Dunn and John Gray. They consider it meaningless to claim that in democracy 'no body rules', since every form of rule needs rulers. I would like to show that both this supposedly realistic criticism and Keane's version of the rule of nobody are too literal and superficial. If we consider democracy to be a kind of sentiment rather than a set of political institutions, we get closer to the puzzling idea that 'no body rules'. This idea, namely, is not about abolishing the rule of men over men, but about being aware of the contingency of all forms of mastery. This was well known to Plato and has been convincingly revived in the works of the French philosopher Jacques Rancière.

Improving the security of multiparty quantum secret sharing against Trojan horse attack

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Deng Fuguo; Li Xihan; Zhou Hongyu; Zhang Zhanjun

2005-01-01

We analyzed the security of the multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol recently proposed by Zhang, Li, and Man [Phys. Rev. A 71, 044301 (2005)] and found that this protocol is secure for any other eavesdropper except for the agent Bob who prepares the quantum signals as he can attack the quantum communication with a Trojan horse. That is, Bob replaces the single-photon signal with a multiphoton one and the other agent Charlie cannot find this cheating as she does not measure the photons before they run back from the boss Alice, which reveals that this MQSS protocol is not secure for Bob. Finally, we present a possible improvement of the MQSS protocol security with two single-photon measurements and four unitary operations

Youth and Ethnic Movements and Their Impacts on Party Politics in ECOWAS Member States

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Taiwo A. Olaiya

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Although they historically played a pivotal role in the fight against colonial rule—as they have in recent attempts to entrench multiparty democratic processes—the role of youth in political parties in West Africa has received less than commensurate attention in studies on democratization. Unlike in advanced democracies where parties are key agents of political socialization and leadership, parties in West Africa are built on ethno-religious foundations. A peculiar character of highly marginalized youth thus becomes inevitable, both in politics and decision-making processes of the state. To assert themselves, the youth have also become agents of destabilization of the democracy they partook to build. Apart from their involvement in political violence, youths are now available as unconscientious “foot soldiers” of ethnic militias and terrorist groups that are constituting increased social problems in West Africa. In this article, we examine how parties and youth have interacted to define the emergence and character of threat to the nascent democracies in contemporary West Africa. The article interrogates how the notions of “youth” and “political participation” have continued to play out in different West African countries within the context of the opportunities and challenges of Africa’s youth bulge on the democratization process. The article observes that the marginalization of West African youths has been part and parcel of history only that their situation has further raised the stake as agent of social disorder in the absence of positive engagement in the recent times.

Identity and democracy: linking individual and social reasoning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Davis, J.B.; Marin, S.R.

2009-01-01

Following Amartya Sen's approach, John Davis and Solange Regina Marin look at individual and social reasoning when examining the complex relationship between identity and democracy. They characterize democracy as a process of social or public reasoning that combines the individual reasoning of all

Democracy Dies in Dualisms. A Response to "Dewey and Democracy"

Science.gov (United States)

Sarofian-Butin, Dan

2017-01-01

This essay reviews Atkinson's article "Dewey and Democracy" and argues that while Dewey and the social foundations classroom may indeed be important for teacher preparation, it is not in the way Atkinson suggests. Namely, I argue that Atkinson's essay has three distinct (yet interrelated) issues: his problematic oversimplifications, what…

AMBIGUOUS JANUS OF MODERN DEMOCRACY

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Volodymyr V. Khmil

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Purpose. The purpose of the research is to analyze ambiguous concept of  democracy as a phenomenon of political and social formation based on political and instrumental approach. As a result, some deep fundamentals of  human social existence and values as social life basis are blurred. Task. The task of  this investigation is to reveal the concept of democracy in its invariative philosophical  meaning and find the consequences of global social transformations towards social entropy. Methods of investigation. To implement the task an activity approach has been used with further possibility to single out two approaches - politological and philosophical. The focus on democracy from philosophic point of view makes possible to anticipate negative entropic processes that lead  to future ambiguity. Subject matter. Chaotic social processes can result in  ruined family, spiritual, legal and moral formations. Regulatory and legal paradigms are becoming less effective and entail disintegration of spiritual and value constituents of worldview causing necessary conditions for social entropy. Originality and Findings. Possible threats for human freedom that hinder the way to targeted  prospects of mankind have been considered in the paper. Thus, taking into account all positive aspects of democracy, it is simultaneously becoming the tool of continuous differentiation of society into tiny autonomous communities similar to nomadic atomization of society. The concept based on moral substantial existence basis as in “axis time” by K. Jaspers that can prevent social entropy resulting in world anthropologic catastrophes has been grounded in the present research.

Design for the values of democracy and justice

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pols, A.J.K.; Spahn, A.; Hoven, van den J.; Vermaas, P.; Poel, van de I.

2015-01-01

In this chapter, we provide an overview of literature on the relation between technology and design and the values of democracy and justice. We first explore how philosophy has traditionally conceptualized democracy and justice. We then examine general philosophical theories and arguments about this

Against Any Theory: Rapid Consolidation of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

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Wolggang Merkel

2006-01-01

Full Text Available The author polemises with once infl uential theories of transformation – whose greats are Jon Elster and Claus Off e – which were based on the theorem that a simultaneous successful economic and political – and, somewhere, state – transformation in Eastern Europe is not possible. Contrary to these theories, in most post-communist countries of Eastern Europe democracy has consolidated rather quickly. The author demonstrates this proposition by measuring the consolidation of new democracies according to Bertelsmann’s transformation index (BTI at four levels: the constitutional and representative level, and the levels of behaviour of actors and political culture. Failures in the analysis of transformation processes are blamed on the theories of action that simply transplanted the ‘transitional paradigm’ from Southern Europe and Latin America into Eastern Europe. Theories of actors seek to deduce highly complex changes of systems in this region from highly formalised and oversimplifi ed constellations of actors, ignoring the very diff erent democratisation potentials of individual countries. Thus, three variables are left in ‘theoretical obscurity’ – modernity, statehood and external actors – which are placed in the focus of modernisation theories, system theories and structuralist theories, and which prove to be extremely important for the understanding of transformation processes in Eastern Europe.

Power and Democracy in Denmark. Conclusions

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Jørgen Goul; Christiansen, Peter Munk; Beck Jørgensen, Torben

In 1997, the Danish Parliament decided to launch a power study, officially An Analysis of Democracy and Power in Denmark. A steering committee consisting of five independent researchers was assigned responsibility for the project. The Steering Committee has gathered the overall conclusions from...... the numerous projects under the Power Study, and this book is a short presentation of these conclusions.The main focus of the book is the state of democracy in Denmark at the dawn of the 21st century. How has democracy fared, has the development made things better or worse, and to which extent does......, and the political institutions show considerable democratic robustness. However, not everything has gone or is going well. There are still pronounced social divisions in Danish society, although their nature has changed somewhat. The ideal of an informed public debate does not always enjoy the best conditions...

Is Polis the Answer? Hannah Arendt on Democracy

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Monika Bokiniec

2011-03-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to reconsider Hannah Arendt’s most influential works from the point of view of her attitude towards democracy and analysis of the way it may contribute to the contemporary understanding and redefinition of the very notion of what democracy is.The paper begins with the reconstruction of Arendt’s anthropology in order to ground her political reflections. The next part discusses the basic characteristics of counsel democracy in forms of spontaneous, local organizations and associations in which every citizen could freely and equally participate, as they show through her analysis of revolutions. The last part deals with different and contradictory interpretations of Arendt’s attitude towards democracy and the question whether her proposition is a practical, revolutionary proposition or an idealist utopia. The interpretation of Arendt’s project emphasizing her democratic and reformative approach is defended. The conclusion states Hannah Arendt’s important contribution to the contemporary reflection on democracy in view of her recognition of the power of grassroots collective actions and their role in contemporary political sphere and the necessity of such formed at grass­roots and spontaneous level actions and associations as a unique safety valve for the society, as well as a counterbalance for mass society.  

Mapping Anomalous Democracies During the Cold War

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Seeberg, Michael

2014-01-01

During the Cold War, a number of countries established stable democracies despite low levels of modernization and a relative lack of democratic neighbour countries—factors otherwise consistently related to the endurance of democracy. Meanwhile, the Cold War superpowers often supported autocracies...... are identified, including Bolivia, Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turkey....

Inclusive or managed democracy?

African Journals Online (AJOL)

remains fragile, and faces the reality that political stability has not been accompanied ... 'managed democracy'2 cognizant of the manipulation of political, economic ...... pushing societies under extractive institutions toward political instability.

Dewey versus ‘Dewey’ on democracy and education

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Ploeg, Piet

In the literature on citizenship education, frequent references are made to Dewey. However, educationalists do not always interpret him correctly. To provide some counterbalance, I explain Dewey’s views on education and democracy. I base this, not only on ‘Democracy and Education’, but also on 17

Creating an International Network of Democracy Builders | IDRC ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Creating an International Network of Democracy Builders. The Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at Queen's University will conduct three case studies on democratic transition in Liberia, Costa Rica and Palestine, partnering with the Sua Foundation, the Arias Foundation and the Arab Thought Forum, respectively.

E-democracy a group decision and negotiation perspective

CERN Document Server

French, Simon

2010-01-01

Web-based interactions to support participation and deliberative democracy, called e-participation and e-democracy, are coming and coming fast. In some instances, the Internet is already permeating politics. However, it is far from clear if the processes involved in these interactions are meaningful and valid, and most of the research in the field has focused largely on the technologies to facilitate or automate the standard democratic instruments involved, such as e-voting or e-debating. This book, though, uses the point of view of the Group Decision and Negotiation approach to thoroughly discuss how web-based decision support tools can be used for public policy decision making. e-Democracy is structured into five main parts. The first part places democracy in context and reviews participatory instruments already in use in the physical world. The second part reviews methodologies that may be used to support groups in public policy decision making with a view on discussing how they may be used in the virtual ...

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mitchell, Timothy; Jaquet, Christophe

2013-01-01

How oil undermines democracy, and our ability to address the environmental crisis. This book is a French translation of 'Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil' originally published by Verso Edition (New York, US, ISBN 978-1781681169). Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called 'the economy' and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy-the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of

Prescribing Democracy?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bourne, Angela; Casals Bertoa, Fernando

2017-01-01

When democracies ban political parties, one of the central issues to usually emerge in both public and academic debate concerns the effects of proscription. Some argue that proscription may lead to radicalisation, a growth of militancy and readiness to use violence. Some also argue that, in the l......When democracies ban political parties, one of the central issues to usually emerge in both public and academic debate concerns the effects of proscription. Some argue that proscription may lead to radicalisation, a growth of militancy and readiness to use violence. Some also argue that...... of party bans on party system development has remained mostly under-researched. Trying to address this lacuna, and employing a new dataset of banned parties in Europe between 1945 and 2015, we compare the effects of party ban regulation on party system stability in three different arenas: electoral......, parliamentary and governmental. In particular, we examine the impact of party proscription on electoral volatility, fragmentation and closure in three different countries: Turkey, Germany and Spain. Using examples both at national and regional (e.g. Basque Country, Navarre, Saxony) level, and making use...

Direct democracy and minority rights: same-sex marriage bans in the U.S.

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Daniel C

2011-01-01

Objectives. A common critique of direct democracy posits that minority rights are endangered by citizen legislative institutions. By allowing citizens to directly create public policy, these institutions avoid the filtering mechanisms of representative democracy that provide a check on the power of the majority. Empirical research, however, has produced conflicting results that leave the question of direct democracy's effect on minority rights open to debate. This article seeks to empirically test this critique using a comparative, dynamic approach.Methods. I examine the diffusion of same-sex marriage bans in the United States using event-history analysis, comparing direct-democracy states to non-direct-democracy states.Results. The results show that direct-democracy states are significantly more likely than other states to adopt same-sex marriage bans.Conclusion. The findings support the majoritarian critique of direct democracy, suggesting that the rights of minority groups are at relatively higher risk under systems with direct democracy.

R3D3 in the Wild: Using A Robot for Turn Management in Multi-Party Interaction with a Virtual Human

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Theune, Mariet; Wiltenburg, Daan; Bode, Max; Linssen, Jeroen

R3D3 is a combination of a virtual human with a non-speaking robot capable of head gestures and emotive gaze behaviour. We use the robot to implement various turn management functions for use in multi-party interaction with R3D3, and present the results of a field study investigating their effects

On Democracy and Leadership: From Rhetoric to Reality

Science.gov (United States)

Karagiorgi, Yiasemina

2011-01-01

This paper resembles a personal narrative on leadership and democracy and outlines how an educational leader can conceptualize democratic leadership and take some steps towards transforming theory into practice. The concepts of democracy and democratic schools within the discourse of educational theory and research are briefly discussed. Based on…

Democracy, leadership and nation building in Nigeria | Nweke ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Dissatisfied with a long-term period of military rule, Nigerians clamored for democratic rule and the nation has since 1999 witnessed civilian transitions of power within democracy. For Nigerians, the beauty of their hard earned democracy lies in its proclivity towards integral and sustainable national development. The thrust ...

Dementia and representative democracy: Exploring challenges and implications for democratic citizenship.

Science.gov (United States)

Sonnicksen, Jared

2016-05-01

Despite growing recognition of the rights of people with dementia for full citizenship, issues related to democracy, whether from theoretical or practical perspectives, remain neglected. Especially since discourses on dementia have expanded to this rights-based approach, it is imperative to begin to examine the meanings and practices of democracy within a context of dementia. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to assess implications of dementia in the context of democracy. Rather than surveying the variety of democratic concepts, it will focus the analytical framework on representative democracy and then outline several challenges to and for representative democracy and citizens with dementia. The intention is to begin to identify paths for ensuring representation, inclusion and participation for those who have dementia. © The Author(s) 2016.

Democracy, political representation, leadership and the institutional question. Debates on the theory and practice of politics in contemporary democracies

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Hernán Fair

2017-02-01

Full Text Available This paper analyzes the problem of political representation in contemporary democracies, its links with the role of political leadership and the institutional issue. In the first part, it examines the debates on political representation from the predominant perspectives of Latin American political science and critiques from alternative views of the discipline. The second part focuses on representative democracies today, examining the links and tensions between Laclau´s post-foundational theory of populism and neo-institutionalist political science. The last part critiques laclausian theory of populism, distinguishing conceptually between the institutional, administrative and pluralistic elements and the liberal tradition, which appears juxtaposed in the laclausian approach, and between the populist (post-foundational and ideological (foundational forms, on the basis of the analytical differences between authoritarianism, dictatorship and totalitarism. After that, some resources of the classical tradition of democracy and republicanism are incorporated, which are sub-theorized in Laclau’s approach. Finally, these tools are used to conceptualize and analyze two dimensions, defined as participatory-horizontal-popular and representative-pluralist, which tend to construct a post-foundational theory of radical democracy for the twenty-first century.

Bombing beyond Democracy. Remembering the Ruins of Europe

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hoffmann, Birthe

2013-01-01

World War II is often seen as a victory for democracy, but at the same time represents the final bankruptcy of those humanistic ideas that seemed so deeply rooted in European tradition. This affected not only the self-perception of the Germans, as obvious, but also that of the winning democracies...

Banzhuren and Classrooming: Democracy in the Chinese Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Jiacheng; Chen, Jing

2013-01-01

The issue of education and democracy has become more and more important in China. This paper firstly explains the theory of democracy in Chinese classrooms, and then focuses on the Chinese banzhuren who is responsible for classrooming, an important educational area equal to instruction. We illustrate how Chinese students achieve development…

"Democracy and Education": Reconstruction of and through Education

Science.gov (United States)

Campbell, James

2016-01-01

While focusing on "Democracy and Education," James Campbell attempts in this essay to offer a synthesis of the full range of John Dewey's educational thought. Campbell explores in particular Dewey's understanding of the relationship between democracy and education by considering both his ideas on the reconstruction of education and on…

Democracy and Human Rights: Concepts, Measures, and Relationships

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Todd Landman

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The empirical literature on democracy and human rights has made great strides over the last 30 years in explaining (1 the variation in the transition to, consolidation of, and quality of democracy; (2 the proliferation and effectiveness of human rights law; and (3 the causes and consequences of human rights across many of their categories and dimensions. This work has in many ways overcome the ‘essentially contested’ nature of the concepts of democracy and human rights conceptually, established different measures of both empirically, and developed increasingly sophisticated statistical and other analytical techniques to provide stronger inferences for the academic and policy community. This article argues that despite these many achievements, there remain tensions between conceptualisations of democracy and human rights over the degree to which one includes the other, the temporal and spatial empirical relationships between them, and the measures that have been developed to operationalize them. These tensions, in turn, affect the kinds of analyses that are carried out, including model specification, methods of estimation, and findings. Drawing on extant theories and measures of both, the article argues that there must be greater specificity in the conceptualisation and operationalization of democracy and human rights, greater care in the development and use of measures, and greater attention to the kinds of inferences that are made possible by them.

Multiparty Evolutionary Game Model in Coal Mine Safety Management and Its Application

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Rongwu Lu

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Coal mine safety management involves many interested parties and there are complex relationships between them. According to game theory, a multiparty evolutionary game model is established to analyze the selection of strategies. Then, a simplified three-party model is taken as an example to carry out detailed analysis and solution. Based on stability theory of dynamics system and phase diagram analysis, this article studies replicator dynamics of the evolutionary model to make an optimization analysis of the behaviors of those interested parties and the adjustment mechanism of safety management policies and decisions. The results show how the charge of supervision of government department and inspection of coal mine enterprise impact the efficiency of safety management and the effect of constraint measures and incentive and other measures in safety management.

Multi-party Measurement-Device-Independent Quantum Key Distribution Based on Cluster States

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Chuanqi; Zhu, Changhua; Ma, Shuquan; Pei, Changxing

2018-03-01

We propose a novel multi-party measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol based on cluster states. A four-photon analyzer which can distinguish all the 16 cluster states serves as the measurement device for four-party MDI-QKD. Any two out of four participants can build secure keys after the analyzers obtains successful outputs and the two participants perform post-processing. We derive a security analysis for the protocol, and analyze the key rates under different values of polarization misalignment. The results show that four-party MDI-QKD is feasible over 280 km in the optical fiber channel when the key rate is about 10- 6 with the polarization misalignment parameter 0.015. Moreover, our work takes an important step toward a quantum communication network.

Democracy as a meaning. Regional participatory forums of public consultation in Argentina

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Víctor Humberto Guzmán

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This paper presents the study of part of the dispute process around the Audiovisual Communication Services law in the argentine public space during the year 2009. Specifically, it shows how the signification of democracy was configured in the Regional Participatory Forums of Public Consultation (FPCP organized by the Federal Broadcasting Committee (COMFER which were held during 2009 as a previous stage to the presentation of the Audiovisual Communication Services Bill. Thus, from the analysis of the interventions in the FPCP, the paper presents the emergence of democracy as democratic gradualness configured in three analytical dimensions: what democracy is not, democracy as plurality, and democracy as participation.

The "Revolution" is a tree of secular life: The Jornal do Brasil and the invention of democracy and legality of civil-military coup and the military government (1964-1968.

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Dayane Cristina Guarnieri

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The research intends to analyze the editorials published by “Jornal do Brasil” (representative of the great press during the military-civil coup until 1968. The objective is to understand the justification for the military civil coup and the military government considering the speech changes of this newspaper in regard to the everyday politics. As “Jornal do Brasil” defended the intervention into Goulart´s constitutional government, like the most of the press, it´s conjectured that it continued to support the military government. The newspaper stressed that democracy should be preserved through democracy institutions and legality and their continuity in association with the military power. Even saying that democracy wasn’t practiced in that context, “JB” stated that the military government had it as the objective of its acts. It has been noticed that in spite of a contradiction in the editorial opinion, which varies between joining and criticism, it is always willing to guide the government actions. Therefore, “Jornal do Brasil” helped the military group to legitimate themselves before society through legalistic democratic speeches, but also in many occasions accused the government pointing out the political farces, for example the Constitution of 1967 and the indirect election, or criticizing the governmental immobility reminding, in several moments, promises made in 1964 that were not fulfilled – these promises intended to benefit the social group to which the newspaper integrated and represented. In other words, it preserves the democratic speech but also elaborates the conception that an arbitrary regime could improve the democracy and the development of capitalism.

SWELA, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Cameroon’s Patrimonial State

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Orock, Rogers Tabe Egbe

2014-01-01

empowerment and accountability. This article draws from a recent anthropological theoretical position on democracy as a work of cultural construction as well as on ethnographic material on an ethno-regional elite organization in Southwestern Cameroon called SWELA to provide an alternative reading...... of the ethnicity-elite-democracy nexus in postcolonial Africa. I suggest that while ethnicity is a major idiom through which the politics of democracy is practiced in Africa where most states are very patrimonially organized, this need not be seen as unproductive to the democratic ideals or expectations...

Democracy, property rights, income equality, and corruption

OpenAIRE

Dong, Bin; Torgler, Benno

2011-01-01

This paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence on the nexus between corruption and democracy. We establish a political economy model where the effect of democracy on corruption is conditional on income distribution and property rights protection. Our empirical analysis with cross-national panel data provides evidence that is consistent with the theoretical prediction. Moreover, the effect of democratization on corruption depends on the protection of property rights and income equality...

Formación de gobierno, democracia consensual y polarización de las elites: el caso vasco Formación de gobierno, democracia consensual y polarización de las elites: el caso vasco

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Consuelo Laiz Castro

2003-01-01

Full Text Available Does the democracy consensus-model survive in the Basque country? Taking as a base of the consociational democracy and its features, we wonder about the problems which arise in the constitution of the governments of this type of democracies, when the cleavages of the society become tight compartments and, at the same time, the positions of the political elite polarize. The proportional electoral system, the multiparty system and a political culture broken into fragments give us the specific variables of the societies with deep cleavages, which should need a consensus-model of democracy. But this way requires that the political elite and the social leaders have the will to maintain the cohesion of the system and to propitiate the necessary pacts in order to integrate to the different groups and to carry out government’s function. If this is not reached, the most probable result is the uncertainty or even the blockade, of the political life. On the other hand, the variable of the violence complicates the square when influencing in the government’s constitution, its strategies and possible alliances.¿Sobrevive la democracia consociativa en el País Vasco? A partir de la democracia de consenso y sus rasgos, nos preguntamos por los problemas que surgen en la formación de los gobiernos de este tipo de democracias, cuando los conflictos de la sociedad se vuelven compartimentos estancos, a la par que las posiciones de las elites políticas se polarizan. El sistema electoral proporcional, el sistema de partidos multipartidista y una cultura política fragmentada nos aportan las variables propias de las sociedades con hondas fracturas, necesitadas de un modelo de democracia consensual. Pero ello requiere que las elites políticas y los dirigentes sociales tengan la voluntad de mantener la cohesión del sistema y propiciar los pactos necesarios para integrar a los distintos grupos y realizar la función de gobierno. Si esto no se alcanza, el

Islam and Democracy: Conflicts and Congruence

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Md Nazrul Islam

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Is authoritarianism intrinsic to Islam? Is Islam incompatible with democracy? These questions are frequently debated in the context of the study of the relationship between the Western and Islamic civilization. The debate has gained momentum since the last decade of the twentieth century, especially after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the subsequent transition of socialist states in Eastern Europe and other authoritarian states in Asia and Latin America to democracy. The publication of The Clash of Civilizations by American scholar Samuel Huntington, in which he presented a controversial argument about a cultural divide and clash between the Islamic world and the West, pushed the debate even further. Apart from Muslim intellectuals, Western academics have spent a significant amount of time on these questions, with a multitude of articles and volumes examining the compatibility of Islam and democracy. In this paper, we will examine Islam’s relationship with democracy from normative and philosophical viewpoints, examining how the established values and principles of Islam as reflected in the Qur’anic and prophetic traditions correspond to Western democratic norms and practices. In order to obtain a profound understanding of this subject, we have delved into, through content analysis, the thoughts of several early modernist Islamic scholars who have had tremendous impact on contemporary Islamic revivalist movements throughout the world, and interviewed a number of contemporary Islamic thinkers in Bangladesh.

Democracy and environment as references for quadruple and quintuple helix innovation systems

Science.gov (United States)

Carayannis, Elias G.; Campbell, David F. J.; Orr, Barron J.

2015-04-01

The perspective of democracy and the ecological context define key references for knowledge production and innovation in innovation systems. Particularly under conditions of environmental change where enhancing the potential for adaptation is critical, this requires a closer look at ecological responsibility and sensitivity in the different innovation models and governance regimes. The "Quintuple Helix" innovation model is an approach that stresses the necessary socio-ecological transition of society and economy by adding an environment helix to an innovation system already made up of three (university-industry-government) or four (civil society relations) helices in a way that supports adaptation by incorporating global warming as both a challenge to and a driver of innovation. There is the proposition that knowledge production and innovation co-evolve with democracy (Carayannis and Campbell, 2014). In the Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000) the existence of a democracy does not appear to be necessary for knowledge production and innovation. However, the Quadruple Helix (Carayannis and Campbell, 2009, 2010 and 2014) is defined and represented by additional key attributes and components: "media-based and culture-based public", "civil society" and "arts, artistic research and arts-based innovation" (Bast, Carayannis and Campbell, 2015). Implications of this are that the fourth helix in the Quadruple Helix innovation systems brings in and represents the perspective of "dimension of democracy" or the "context of democracy" for knowledge in general and knowledge production and innovation in more particular. Within theories of democracy there is a competition between narrow and broader concepts of democracy (Campbell, 2013). This is particularly true when democracy is to be understood to transcend more substantially the narrow understanding of being primarily based on or being primarily rooted in government institutions (within a Triple Helix

Delegated democracy. Siting selection for the Swedish nuclear waste

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Johansson, Hanna Sofia

2008-11-01

The present study concerns the siting of the Swedish nuclear waste repository. Four cases are examined: the feasibility studies in Nykoeping and Tierp (cases 1 and 2), as well as three public consultation meetings with conservationist and environmental organisations, and two study visits to nuclear facilities in Oskarshamn and Oesthammar, which were held during what is called the site-investigation phase (cases 3 and 4). The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co (SKB) began the search for a nuclear waste site in the 1970s. Since 1992 SKB has conducted feasibility studies in eight municipalities, including in the four municipalities mentioned above. At the present time more comprehensive site investigations are underway in Oskarshamn and Oesthammar, two municipalities that already host nuclear power plants as well as storages for nuclear waste. In addition to SKB and the municipalities involved in the site-selection process, politicians, opinion groups, concerned members of the public, and oversight bodies are important actors. The analysis of the cases employs the concepts of 'sub-politics', 'boundary work', and 'expertise', together with the four models of democracy 'representative democracy', participatory democracy', 'deliberative democracy', and 'technocracy'. The aim of the study is to describe the characteristics of Swedish democracy in relation to the disposal of Swedish nuclear waste. The main questions of the study are: Which democratic ideals can be found within SKB's siting process during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process during the site investigations? and Which democratic ideals were influential during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process? The study is based on qualitative methods, and the source materials consist of documents, interviews, and participant observations. In summary, the form of democracy that emerges in the four case studies can be described as delegated democracy. This means that a large

Lower Bounds for Number-in-Hand Multiparty Communication Complexity, Made Easy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Phillips, Jeff; Verbin, Elad; Zhang, Qin

2012-01-01

; the technique seems applicable to a wide range of other problems as well. The obtained communication lower bounds imply new lower bounds in the functional monitoring model [11] (also called the distributed streaming model). All of our lower bounds allow randomized communication protocols with two-sided error......In this paper we prove lower bounds on randomized multiparty communication complexity, both in the blackboard model (where each message is written on a blackboard for all players to see) and (mainly) in the message-passing model, where messages are sent player-to-player. We introduce a new...... technique for proving such bounds, called symmetrization, which is natural, intuitive, and often easy to use. For example, for the problem where each of k players gets a bit-vector of length n, and the goal is to compute the coordinate-wise XOR of these vectors, we prove a tight lower bounds of Ω...

Regional Autonomy and Local Democracy: Independent Candidates Cases

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Suryanto

2016-11-01

Full Text Available One of the efforts to achieve local democracy is through the participation of independent candidates in the Direct General Election in the region. The presence of independent candidates in the Direct General Election gives a great hope to change the political structure of the shackles of the old forces. This paper aims to discuss the implication of regional heads coming from independent candidates on the effectiveness of local governance and the implementation of substantive democracy in the region. The method used is a qualitative approach using descriptive research method. The data collection is done through literature approach. Processing data uses Milles and Huberman interactive models, which includes data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion. The study concluded three things: First, the presence of independent candidates in the Direct General Election gives the opportunities to achieve local democracy that is getting bigger, Second, Regional Heads elected from independent candidates face the challenges of the ineffectiveness of regional government, and Third, within certain limits, the power of elected regional heads from independent lane leads to the realization of democracy that is not substantial.

High-stakes educational testing and democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ydesen, Christian

2014-01-01

This article investigates the relation between high-stakes educational testing and democracy drawn from the experiences of 20th-century high-stakes educational testing practices in the Danish history of education. The article presents various concepts of democracy using leading propositions within...... the field of education. Then a sample of relevant historic case studies are examined in light of these definitions. Among other things, the article concludes that a combination of different evaluation technologies – some formative and some summative – might be the safest way to go from a democratic...

The young Marx on constituent power and “true democracy.”

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Flohr, Mikkel

Marx and Marxism is commonly charged with having neglected politics and the development of a theory of politics. However, this presumption ignores Marx’s unfinished and unpublished 1843 Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State, where he engaged political theory at length – an engagement, which...... propelled him towards his subsequent critique of political economy. It is the aim of the proposed paper to reconstruct and reinterpret his argument focusing in particular on his conceptualization of constituent power and “true democracy.” In the 1843 Critique Marx argues that democracy is the foundation...... the conflicts of civil society. Marx therefore concludes that all these political forms are democracies in contradiction with themselves. Marx proceeds to suggest that it is possible to overcome these contradictions and develop an adequate political form of democracy, which he describes as “true democracy...

Democracia dos antigos x democracia dos modernos: uma revisão de literatura Old democracy x modern democracy – a literature review

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Alexandre José Pierini

2008-07-01

Full Text Available This work is a literature review on democracy. Firstly, a short historical retrospect of democracy is carried out. This retrospect is important because democracy had links with the citizen’s direct participation in the decision-making. The modern democracy, on its turn, is related to the political representation, where the citizen participates through mechanisms developed by the State to elect its representatives. The main aspect is the crisis inherent in the current democratic system which needs an urgent review process. It is on the crisis established on democracy that the old as well as the modern democracy establish convergence points, for mechanisms of direct participation are being thought and blended together with the modern democracy, with the purpose of recreating the current political system.O presente trabalho se caracteriza como uma revisão de literatura sobre o tema democracia. Para a consecução da revisão, buscou-se expor no primeiro momento a realização de um breve retrospecto histórico da democracia. Esse retrospecto é importante porque a democracia possuía vínculos com a participação direta do cidadão nas tomadas de decisão. A democracia dos modernos por sua vez, se relacionada com a representação política, onde o cidadão participa por meio de mecanismos criados pelo Estado para eleger os seus representantes. O ponto nevrálgico e que marca sobretudo os aspectos relacionados a esta revisão de literatura é a crise inerente do sistema democrático em voga e que necessita sobremaneira de um processo de revisão. A crise da democracia conduz ao estabelecimento de pontos de convergência entre a democracia dos antigos e a democracia dos modernos mecanismos de participação direta estão sendo pensados e mesclados junto à democracia dos modernos com o intuito de recriar o sistema político vigente.

Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Michels, A.M.B.|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/11124501X; de Graaf, L.J.

2010-01-01

Citizen participation is usually seen as a vital aspect of democracy. Many theorists claim that citizen participation has positive effects on the quality of democracy. This article examines the probability of these claims for local participatory policymaking projects in two municipalities in the

Philosophy for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Bartels, Rob; Onstenk, Jeroen; Veugelers, Wiel

2016-01-01

Philosophy for Democracy is a research project that aims to examine whether and how Philosophy with Children contributes to the development of democratic skills and attitudes. In the Netherlands, as in almost all Western countries, Philosophy with Children is linked with the movement for citizenship education. This article reports the research on…

21st-century liberal democracy and its contradictions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Paolo Bellini

2014-07-01

Full Text Available This brief paper intends to highlight the contradictions in which liberal democracy struggles within the process of globalisation, influenced as it is by the new connecting technologies. In particular, the difficult relationship between liberalism and democracy is analysed in light of the latest communitarist theories and new trends that interpret them socially. 

The British parliament: An effort towards the constitutional reform

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pejić Irena

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The British Parliament is the eldest representative assembly which inspired the development of most European parliamentary systems. This institution provides a framework for the Westminster model of democracy. The Parliament structure is based on bicameralism, including two chambers: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The two-chamber structure is an integral part of the British parliamentary system. During the last century, many reforms took place regarding the modernization of Parliament. Thus, the number of members of the House of Lord has been reduced in order to ensure more efficiency in the working procedures. However, the House of Commons is still 'the dominant House' given its capacity to recruit a political majority which is eligible to control the Cabinet. During the 20th century, several waves of reforms engulfed the traditional English parliamentarism and its 'unwritten' constitution. Although the reforms have yielded some results, they have not yet produced a constitution in the formal sense. The partially reformed Parliament has not lost the traditional supremacy it was initially vested under the original postulates of the parliamentary sovereignty doctrine. The great constitutional reform in the UK, initiated in 1997, has encompassed not only Parliament but also a vast array of other areas ranging from the state power organization to human rights. In this process, the British Parliament should exercise a dual function: as a subject of reform ('reformer', as well as an object of reform ('the reformed'. Undoubtedly, the United Kingdom has been facing one of the largest waves of constitutional reforms in its long history, which will sooner or later lead to a constitutional codification in the state whose system is still predominantly based on the historical and 'unwritten' constitution.

The Secret Driving Force Behind Mongolia’s Successful Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

2016-03-01

the nation’s democracy movement its earliest stages. Courtesy of the Democratic Union of Mongolia PRISM 6, no. 1 FROM THE FIELD | 141 The Secret Driving...assistance and trade. Our state budget PRISM 6, no. 1 FROM THE FIELD | 143 THE SECRET DRIVING FORCE BEHIND MONGOLIA’S SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRACY collapsed; we...O yungerel Tsedevdam ba (2006) PRISM 6, no. 1 FROM THE FIELD | 145 THE SECRET DRIVING FORCE BEHIND MONGOLIA’S SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRACY significantly as

Local Democracy in Myanmar

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kyed, Helene Maria; Harrisson, Annika Pohl; McCarthy, Gerard

Myanmar is undergoing a comprehensive political transition. In April this year the first democratically elected government in six decades came into power under the leadership of NLD, the pro-democracy party headed by Aung San Suu Kyi. The largest peace conference in the country’s history was held...... in early September, and Myanmar again made the international headlines a week later when Kofi Annan visited the country to head a commission for addressing communal violence. These national events are crucial to the democratization process in Myanmar and for ending the almost seven decades of civil war....... However, often overlooked in this larger picture of transition is the state of local democracy, including village level governance and everyday state-citizen engagements. Political changes at this level are equally crucial for the wider democratization process. This roundtable summary discusses the 2016...

Postsecular democracy and the reign of God: Reading Habermas and Moltmann in South Africa

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Wessel Bentley

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Governed by a liberal constitution, the South African democratic project is progressively finding its own identity. Being a democracy in Africa has unique challenges, as this system of governance needs to be contextualised by integrating African culture, history and memory into a political model which will promote sustainable participatory citizenship. This article engages, from a South African perspective, Habermas’ model of a postsecular democracy and Moltmann’s understanding of ‘Reich Gottes’ in Ethics of Hope. This article proposes an integrated relationship between responsible citizenship (Habermas’ postsecular democracy and a Christian social conscience (Moltmann’s ‘Reign of God’1for the South African context. Postsekulêre demokrasie en die koninkryk van God: in gesprek met Habermas en Moltmann vanuit ’n Suid-Afrikaanse perspektief. Die Suid-Afrikaanse demokrasie wat gegrond is op ’n liberale grondwet, is geleidelik besig om ’n eie identiteit te vind. Demokrasie in Afrika ervaar unieke uitdagings en moet derhalwe gekontekstualiseer word deur die Afrikakultuur, geskiedenis en geheue in ’n politieke model te inkorporeer wat beoog om houdbare en deelnemende burgerskap te bevorder. Hierdie artikel tree vanuit ’n Suid Afrikaanse perspektief in gesprek met Habermas se model oor postsekulêre demokrasie sowel as met Moltmann se verstaan van ‘Reich Gottes’ in Ethics of Hope. ’n Geïntegreerde verhouding tussen verantwoordelike burgerskap (Habermas se postsekulêre demokrasie en ’n Christelike sosiale gewete (Moltmann se ‘Koninkryk van God‘ binne die Suid-Afrikaanse konteks word derhalwe deur hierdie artikel ondersteun.

Liberalism and democracy Liberalismo e democracia

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(Autor Claude Lefort

2008-12-01

Full Text Available In this essay, the historical connections between liberalism and democracy are analyzed, based mostly on three important authors of the French liberal thought of the first half of the 19th century: Benjamin Constant (1767-1830, François Guizot (1787-1874 e Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859. Although, the Author doesn’t forget to highlight the contemporary issues which demand confronting and elucidating the chances of democracy. Keywords: French Liberalism. Democracy. Political Philosophy. Tolerance. São aqui examinadas as relações históricas entre liberalismo e democracia, com base principalmente em três importantes autores do pensamento liberal francês da primeira metade do século XIX: Benjamin Constant (1767-1830, François Guizot (1787-1874 e Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859. Contudo, o Autor não deixa de lançar luz sobre as questões contemporâneas que exigem enfrentar e elucidar as chances da democracia. Palavras-chave: Liberalismo francês. Democracia. Filosofia política. Tolerância.

Schooling for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Noddings, Nel

2008-01-01

The author of this article contends that current efforts at school reform--ostensibly designed to increase equality of outcomes--may actually be undermining democracy by undervaluing the wide range of talents required in 21st-century America. Many policy makers today argue that all students should have a standard curriculum that will prepare them…

Democracy predicts sport and recreation membership: Insights from 52 countries.

Science.gov (United States)

Balish, Shea M

2017-03-01

Although evidence suggests sport and recreation are powerful contributors to worldwide public health, sizable gender differences persist. It is unknown whether country characteristics moderate gender differences across countries. The primary purpose of this study was to examine if countries' levels of democracy and/or gender inequality moderate gender differences in sport and recreation membership across countries. The secondary purpose was to examine if democracy and/or gender inequality predicts overall rates of sport and recreation membership for both males and females. This study involved a nested cross-sectional design and employed the sixth wave (2013) of the world value survey (n Ss =71,901, n countries =52). Multiple hierarchal nonlinear Bernoulli models tested: (1) if countries' levels of democracy moderate gender differences in sport and recreation membership; and (2) if democracy is associated with increased sport and recreation membership for both males and females. Countries' level of democracy fully moderated gender differences in sport and recreation membership across countries. Moreover, democracy was positively associated with both male and female membership, even when controlling for individual and country-level covariates. Democratic political regimes may confer health benefits via increased levels of sport and recreation membership, especially for females. Future research should test mediating mechanisms. Copyright © 2016 Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

FAITH, INTOLERANCE, VIOLENCE AND BIGOTRY: Legal and Constitutional Issues of Freedom of Religion in Indonesia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Adam J. Fenton

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Religious intolerance and bigotry indeed is a contri­buting factor in social and political conflict including manifestations of terrorist violence. While freedom of religion is enshrined in Indonesia’s Constitution, social practices and governmental regulations fall short of constitutional and international law guarantees, allowing institutionalised bias in the treatment of religious minorities. Such bias inhibits Indonesia’s transition to a fully-functioning pluralistic democracy and sacrifices democratic ideals of personal liberty and freedom of expression for the stated goals of religious and social harmony. The Ahok case precisely confirms that. The paper examines the constitutional bases of freedom of religion, Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law and takes account of the history and tenets of Pancasila which dictate a belief in God as the first principle of state ideology. The paper argues that the Indonesian state’s failure to recognise the legitimacy of alternate theological positions is a major obstacle to Indonesia recognising the ultimate ideal, enshrined in the national motto, of unity in diversity.

The European Citizens’ Initiative: Transnational Democracy in the EU at last?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maximilian Conrad

2011-06-01

Full Text Available The European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, in force since December 2009, introduced the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI as a means of strengthening citizen involvement in EU decision making. A minimum of one million citizens from at least seven of the EU’s current 27 member states can request that the European Commission submit a legislative proposal on the issue of the initiative. But the ECI is not only a means of strengthening participatory democracy in the EU. It also bears the potential for a more fundamental transformation of democracy, namely in the direction of transnational participatory democracy. Starting with a short introduction to how the ECI will work in practice as well as a brief history of participatory democracy in the EU, this article therefore examines the ECI from the perspective of democratic theory. How profound an impact will the ECI have on democracy in the European Union?

The Universal Constitutionalism in an Age of Religious Diversity. Western Secularism Tested by “New” Cultural Conflicts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francesco Alicino

2011-03-01

Full Text Available An abridged version of this article (reported by Prof. Nicola Colaianni, University of Bari “Aldo Moro” was presented at the Seminar on “Secularism and Liberal Constitutionalism”, held at the University of LUISS “Guido Carli” (Rome on 6th July 2010.This article is due to be published in the International Review of Sociology, in 2011. SUMMARY: 1. Introduction – 2. Relation-Collaboration between the State and Churches in Constitutional Democracies – 3. The laicité à la française Tested by a Deprivatised Religious Process – 3.1. The French Rigid Secularism. Freedom (of Religion through the State – 4. Canada’s Open Secularism. The  question of Religious-Based Family Law Disputes – 4.1 Reasonable Accommodation and “New” Religious Nomoi Groups – 5. Collaboration-Relation between the State and Churches in Italy – 5.1. The Italian Secularism Tested by the New “Religious Geography” – 6. Conclusion. Abstract Under the pressing process of immigration and globalisation many Western constitutional democracies have moved from a number of religions, sharing a common culture, to today's age of diversity. As opposed to the past, the current democracies are facing the lack of overlapping consensus over the basic constitutional laws: namely, the meaning and the scope of freedom of religion, secularism, the separation Church-State, equal treatment and the rule of law. This is because individuals often come to adopt their basic values by very different ways. The nature, scope and force of such values are likely to be affected by competing and, sometimes, contested fundamental values and worldviews. From here stems the pressing tension – or dilemma – between “unity” and “diversity”. This essay starts with general considerations about the freedom of religion principle, strictly related with the “separation” as well as “collaboration” between secular States and Churches; then the author analyses three case

Patron-Client Politics, Democracy and Governance in Nigeria, 1999 ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Its evidence abounds in older democracies, emerging democracies and even authoritarian regimes. In Nigeria, its evidence abounds in the pre-colonial political system through the colonial era to the previous civil administrations in the country since independence. The paper revealed that pecuniary motivation and the ...

Education and support for representative, direct and stealth democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Coffé, Hilde; Michels, Ank

2014-01-01

Using data collected within the scope of a Dutch internet panel survey (LISS) in 2011, this study tracks public support for direct, stealth and representative democracy according to educational level. Our findings indicate that, in terms of overall support for each specific type of democracy, lower

Robust Multiparty Quantum Secret Key Sharing Over Two Collective-Noise Channels via Three-Photon Mixed States

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Zhangyin; Yuan Hao; Gao Gan; Shi Shouhua

2006-01-01

We present a robust (n,n)-threshold scheme for multiparty quantum secret sharing of key over two collective-noise channels (i.e., the collective dephasing channel and the collective rotating channel) via three-photon mixed states. In our scheme, only if all the sharers collaborate together can they establish a joint key with the message sender and extract the secret message from the sender's encrypted message. This scheme can be implemented using only a Bell singlet, a one-qubit state and polarization identification of single photon, so it is completely feasible according to the present-day technique.

Corruption: Threat to democracy and market economy in Nigeria ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In the research on 'Corruption: Threat to Democracy and Market Economy', the researchers critically explore the issue of corruption and how it threatens the democracy and market economy in Nigeria. Relevant literature was revised, which formed the secondary data. The theoretical framework of the study is political ...

Democracy and development in the age of globalisation | Mubangizi ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Globalisation is one of the leading characteristics of the world today – a world that is striving for development, democracy and the protection of human rights. There is no doubt that the relationship between globalisation and democracy is quite complex. So too is the relationship between globalisation and development.

Classifying and explaining democracy in the Muslim world

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rohaizan Baharuddin

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to classify and explain democracies in the 47 Muslim countries between the years 1998 and 2008 by using liberties and elections as independent variables. Specifically focusing on the context of the Muslim world, this study examines the performance of civil liberties and elections, variation of democracy practised the most, the elections, civil liberties and democratic transitions and patterns that followed. Based on the quantitative data primarily collected from Freedom House, this study demonstrates the following aggregate findings: first, the “not free not fair” elections, the “limited” civil liberties and the “Illiberal Partial Democracy” were the dominant feature of elections, civil liberties and democracy practised in the Muslim world; second, a total of 413 Muslim regimes out of 470 (47 regimes x 10 years remained the same as their democratic origin points, without any transitions to a better or worse level of democracy, throughout these 10 years; and third, a slow, yet steady positive transition of both elections and civil liberties occurred in the Muslim world with changes in the nature of elections becoming much more progressive compared to the civil liberties’ transitions.

Non-adaptive measurement-based quantum computation and multi-party Bell inequalities

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hoban, Matty J; Campbell, Earl T; Browne, Dan E; Loukopoulos, Klearchos

2011-01-01

Quantum correlations exhibit behaviour that cannot be resolved with a local hidden variable picture of the world. In quantum information, they are also used as resources for information processing tasks, such as measurement-based quantum computation (MQC). In MQC, universal quantum computation can be achieved via adaptive measurements on a suitable entangled resource state. In this paper, we look at a version of MQC in which we remove the adaptivity of measurements and aim to understand what computational abilities remain in the resource. We show that there are explicit connections between this model of computation and the question of non-classicality in quantum correlations. We demonstrate this by focusing on deterministic computation of Boolean functions, in which natural generalizations of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger paradox emerge; we then explore probabilistic computation via, which multipartite Bell inequalities can be defined. We use this correspondence to define families of multi-party Bell inequalities, which we show to have a number of interesting contrasting properties.

Non-adaptive measurement-based quantum computation and multi-party Bell inequalities

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hoban, Matty J; Campbell, Earl T; Browne, Dan E [Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT (United Kingdom); Loukopoulos, Klearchos, E-mail: m.hoban@ucl.ac.uk [Department of Materials, Oxford University, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 4PH (United Kingdom)

2011-02-15

Quantum correlations exhibit behaviour that cannot be resolved with a local hidden variable picture of the world. In quantum information, they are also used as resources for information processing tasks, such as measurement-based quantum computation (MQC). In MQC, universal quantum computation can be achieved via adaptive measurements on a suitable entangled resource state. In this paper, we look at a version of MQC in which we remove the adaptivity of measurements and aim to understand what computational abilities remain in the resource. We show that there are explicit connections between this model of computation and the question of non-classicality in quantum correlations. We demonstrate this by focusing on deterministic computation of Boolean functions, in which natural generalizations of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger paradox emerge; we then explore probabilistic computation via, which multipartite Bell inequalities can be defined. We use this correspondence to define families of multi-party Bell inequalities, which we show to have a number of interesting contrasting properties.

A Brief Survey of Democracy Promotion in U.S. Foreign Policy

Science.gov (United States)

2014-03-01

highlight that economic and security concerns both pre-dated active democracy promotion efforts. 2 For its first centennial , the United States was...the troubles of the world. The 1930s brought the Great Depression and the perception that democracy and capitalism might not be such good ideas after...peacetime foreign policy on democracy was somewhat constrained by the Great Depression and World War II. As World War II raged, FDR eloquently

Deliberative democracy in health care: current challenges and future prospects.

Science.gov (United States)

Safaei, Jalil

2015-01-01

There is a vast body of literature on deliberative, participative, or engaged democracy. In the area of health care there is a rapidly expanding literature on deliberative democracy as embodied in various notions of public engagement, shared decision-making (SDM), patient-centered care, and patient/care provider autonomy over the past few decades. It is useful to review such literature to get a sense of the challenges and prospects of introducing deliberative democracy in health care. This paper reviews the key literature on deliberative democracy and SDM in health care settings with a focus on identifying the main challenges of promoting this approach in health care, and recognizing its progress so far for mapping out its future prospects in the context of advanced countries. Several databases were searched to identify the literature pertinent to the subject of this study. A total of 56 key studies in English were identified and reviewed carefully for indications and evidence of challenges and/or promising avenues of promoting deliberative democracy in health care. Time pressure, lack of financial motivation, entrenched professional interests, informational imbalance, practical feasibility, cost, diversity of decisions, and contextual factors are noted as the main challenges. As for the prospects, greater clarity on conception of public engagement and policy objectives, real commitment of the authorities to public input, documenting evidence of the effectiveness of public involvement, development of patient decision supports, training of health professionals in SDM, and use of multiple and flexible methods of engagement leadership suited to specific contexts are the main findings in the reviewed literature. Seeking deliberative democracy in health care is both challenging and rewarding. The challenges have been more or less identified. However, its prospects are potentially significant. Such prospects are more likely to materialize if deliberative democracy is

Understanding the role of nationalism in "new democracies".

Science.gov (United States)

Matić, D

1999-06-01

The transition from communism to democracy has raised numerous discussions regarding the nature of postcommunism in Eastern Europe. According to the author, the two main approaches used to explain the collapse of communism--one that claims that resurrected civil society triumphed over totalitarianism, and, the other that avers Eastern Europe's propensity for irrationalism and a political behaviour based on ethnic exclusion and hatred--overlook the unique nature of postcommunism. In order to properly grasp the nature of this phenomena, the author argues that one must first understand the intrinsic nature of Eastern Europe's transformation. To do this requires an analysis of the social structures that drive political change and identifying the social group that is the main bearer of transformation. The author believes that though her analysis focuses primarily on the case of former Yugoslavia, and Croatia in particular, the conclusions she draws from it are also valid for other East European countries: that the nation is regarded as the principal catalyst for political change and that nationalism is the main legitimizing principle of emerging states. This analysis rejects the common view according to which nationalism is casually discounted as an irrational political movement that is fundamentally hostile to democracy and freedom. Quite the contrary. Throughout Eastern Europe nationalism has had a positive role in bringing down communism and creating a space for democracy to take root. Still, tension exists between nationalism and the democracy it spawned. To understand this paradox requires an extensive sociological and historical study of the particular conditions within which a particular community defines the goals of nationalism and the specific content of its main undergirding concepts like nation and state. Identifying the circumstances within which nationalism begins to act as an obstacle to the establishment of full-fledge democracy is key to understanding

Landscape democracy, three sets of values, and the connoisseur method

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Arler, Finn; Mellqvist, Helena

2015-01-01

for argument. It examines various methods that have been used to try to make landscape decisions more democratic. In the last part of the paper the connoisseur method is introduced. This method emphasises stakeholder participation in deliberative processes with a particular focus on place-based knowledge......The European Landscape Convention has brought up the question of democracy in relation to landscape transformation, but without a clear definition of democracy. This paper conceptualises democracy in relation to three main sets of values related to self-determination, co-determination and respect...

Dewey's Ethical Justification for Public Deliberation Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Shook, John

2013-01-01

Interpretations of John Dewey's political theory grasp his respect for public deliberation, but typically overlook his ethical justification for democracy. Dewey gave two primary reasons why democracy is superior to other forms of government. First, a public educated in the tools of social intelligence can be more effective at managing their…

"A Liberation of Powers": Agency and Education for Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Boyte, Harry C.; Finders, Margaret J.

2016-01-01

In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the "shrinkage" of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency-focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency--a citizen politics that is…

RETHINKING DEMOCRACY (reflections on John Dunn’s “Breaking democracy’s spell”

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

P. S. Kanevskiy

2017-01-01

Full Text Available This article analyzes a book “Breaking democracy’s spell”, the last work by John Dunn, world famous political scientist from Cambridge. Current discourse on democracy and tendencies of its development is seen through the lens of this book and John Dunn’s political thought. It is hard to question the fact that democracy is still one of the mightiest political symbols, although its core meaning still poses a lot of questions. Democracy is an unstable variable, which changes through time being influenced by multiple factors. This is why, before trying to understand where democracy’s mimicries are leading us, Dunn proposes to look closer at how it became a category which is so essential for legitimizing contemporary regimes. Is our understanding of democracy the same as it was 100, 50 or even 20 years ago? What determines the dynamics of democracy as a symbol of public power? Does democracy help nations in their quest for well being and effective government? Dunn’s work is not just an original analyses of democracy in political, sociological and historical perspectives, it is also a challenge to provoke a discussion on democracies failures both in developed and developing world. Dunn’s work divided scientific community on those who saw warning signs to democracy and those who considered author to be unjustified pessimist. In reality, Dunn’s work doesn’t give simple explanations because in relatively small text he managed to put complex set of questions, which can’t answered unequivocally. Author himself recognizes that he had to use absolutely new style to convey his thoughts. This article is an attempt to interpret Dunn’s ideas and react to his call to start a discussion on contents and perceptions of democracy which he sent to a political science community. This discourse is particularly important today for Russia where democracy not only encounters institutional difficulties and misunderstood by majority of the citizens

Evolution of democracy in Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Oberoi, Mukesh K.

The emphasis of this thesis is to build an intuitive and robust GIS (Geographic Information systems) Tool which will give a survey on the evolution of democracy in European countries. The user can know about the evolution of the democratic histories of these countries by just clicking on them on the map. The information is provided in separate HTML pages which will give information about start of revolution, transition to democracy, current legislature, women's status in the country etc. There are two separate web pages for each country- one shows the detailed explanation on how democracy evolved in diff. countries and another page contains a timeline which holds key events of the evolution. The tool has been developed in JAVA. For the European map MOJO (Map Objects Java Objects) is used. MOJO is developed by ESRI. The major features shown on the European map were designed using MOJO. MOJO made it easy to incorporate the statistical data with these features. The user interface, as well as the language was intentionally kept simple and easy to use, to broaden the potential audience. To keep the user engaged, key aspects are explained using HTML pages. The idea is that users can view the timeline to get a quick overview and can go through the other html page to learn about things in more detail.

Enhancing policy innovation by redesigning representative democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Eva

2016-01-01

Policy innovation is a key aspect of public innovation, which has been largely overlooked. Political leadership, competition and collaboration are key drivers of policy innovation. It is a barrier in traditional models of representative democracy that they provide weak conditions for collaboration....... Two Danish case studies indicate that collaboration between politicians and relevant and affected stakeholders can promote policy innovation, but also that a redesign of representative democracy is needed in order to establish a productive combination of political leadership, competition...... and collaboration in political life....

Democracy at the end of the History

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vicente Sanfélix Vidarte

2013-12-01

Full Text Available http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2013v12n2p289 This article analyzes the loss of legitimacy that the economic crisis brought upon representative democracy and the consequences that can be drawn for the thesis of the end of History. The thesis we defend here is that the deterioration of the welfare state, as a result, under very specific conditions, of the capitalism in certain parts of the world, runs parallel with the delegative degradation of democracy.

The Populist Conception of Democracy Beyond Popular Sovereignty

OpenAIRE

Corduwener, Pepijn

2014-01-01

With populist parties making electoral progress across the European continent, the question of what their electoral success means for contemporary democratic systems has gained increasing significance. This article investigates how two populist radical right parties, the Austrian FPÖ and the Dutch PVV, conceptualise democracy, based on a wide range of party documents released over recent decades. It builds upon recent academic consensus that the relationship between populism and democracy is ...

an a Fledgling Democracy take

African Journals Online (AJOL)

process and the country's prospects for consolidating a democracy in the future. ... Mark Anstey is a Professor in Labour Relations, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan ... potentials for hydro-electric power it is shockingly underdeveloped, boasting.

Civic Innovation & American Democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Sirianni, Carmen; Friedland, Lewis

1997-01-01

Argues that American democracy is at a critical stage of development, with declining trust in government, citizens feeling displaced by a professional political class, derailed public interest, and policy that limits citizen deliberation and responsibility. Some instances of civic innovation, community organization, civic journalism, and efforts…

Science, expertise, and democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Weinberg, Justin; Elliott, Kevin C

2012-06-01

The combination of government's significant involvement in science, science's significant effects on the public, and public ignorance (of both politics and science) raise important challenges for reconciling scientific expertise with democratic governance. Nevertheless, there have recently been a variety of encouraging efforts to make scientific activity more responsive to social values and to develop citizens' capacity to engage in more effective democratic governance of science. This essay introduces a special issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, "Science, Expertise, and Democracy," consisting of five papers that developed from the inaugural Three Rivers Philosophy conference held at the University of South Carolina in April 2011. The pieces range from a general analysis of the in-principle compatibility of scientific expertise and democracy to much more concrete studies of the intersection between scientific practices and democratic values in areas such as weight-of-evidence analysis, climate science, and studies of locally undesirable land uses.

Democracy and Women's Health

Science.gov (United States)

Safaei, Jalil

2009-01-01

New research on broader determinants of health has culminated into the new paradigm of social determinants of health. The fundamental view that underlies this new paradigm is that socioeconomic and political contexts in which people live have significant bearing upon their health and well-being. Unlike a wealth of research on socioeconomic determinants, few studies have focused on the role of political factors. Some of these studies examine the role of political determinants on health through their mediation with the labour environments and systems of welfare state. A few others study the relationship between polity regimes and population health more directly. However, none of them has a focus on women's health. This study explores the interactions, both direct and indirect, between democracy and women's health. In doing so, it identifies some of the main health vulnerabilities for women and explains, through a conceptual model, how democracy and respect for human rights interacts with women's health. PMID:21836777

Public Participation Guide: Electronic Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Electronic democracy describes a wide range of interactive tools that embrace existing and emergent media sources as a forum for allowing members of the public to express opinions and seek to influence decision-making.

Lebanese Young Citizens’ Attitudes toward Peace and Democracy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Khayrazad Kari Jabbour

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Lebanon is a small democratic country with a population of less than four million and a range of diversity; there are at least 18 different religious sects and 19 different political parties. The diversity among ethnic, religious and/or political groups has created conflicts that severely impact the Lebanese economy, environment, politics and most importance our young citizens. The aim of this investigation is to capture students’ awareness and attitudes toward the accountability and mechanisms of peace and democracy. Data for the study was obtained from extensive literature reviews and questionnaire surveys of 70 high school students. The investigation was conducted in the fall of the year 2013. The results of the study showed that most Lebanese young citizen view peace and democracy process associated with the end of violence and conflict behaviors; very small percent of respondents believe that bringing peace and democracy process should be answered by the people or by themselves. Results also indicate a lack of a sense of security among young citizen. This raises the urgent need to put into practice an effective peace education program that inspires and motivates young citizens to be involved in the peace and the democracy building process.

The new left and democracy in Latin America

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Francisco Panizza

2009-05-01

Full Text Available Without embarking on a theoretical debate over the meaning of the term, it is obvious that the left is on the rise in Latin America. However, we should not ignore the fact that the coming to power of left-wing and centre-left parties and movements presents a certain amount of paradoxes and questions. One of the most important of the many paradoxes is the fact that, in spite of the leftwards electoral shift in the region, there is no evidence that the electorate of Latin America has moved to the left in a significant manner. As for the questions, these concern the connection between left-wing governments and democracy, and especially the future challenges that these governments must face to preserve and develop democracy. In an attempt to unravel the paradox and answer these questions, this article examines the roots, contexts and political challenges of left-wing governments in Latin America. To this end, the author analyses a number of issues, such as the tensions between different logics of political representation and their implications for democracy, in addition to discussing the conditions under which the tensions between the different logics of political representation can contribute (or not to the developing of democracy in the region.

The Cure for Civiliter Mortuus: Complementary Values of Phenomenology and Democracy

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Mindaugas Briedis

2011-03-01

Full Text Available The core of this article is the ancient question concerning the individual person in relation to his/her society. This fundamental question of ethics and political philosophy is approached from the perspective of phenomenological philosophy. Hence, this article is an attempt to conjoin two prima facie inconsistent (because of category mistake types of attitude towards reality and action, e.g. democracy and phenomenology. The thesis states that there is a common ground between the basic features of phenomenological method and the fundamental values of democracy. This paper explores the arguments that establish this parallelism between the values of democracy and phenomenology. One of the outcomes of this analysis will be the sketch of a new kind of virtue ethics and a new type of citizen, concerning new approaches to identity problem. In this respect method of phenomenology can be used as a technique (phronesis for a future citizenship. On the other hand, this perspective helps to re­evaluate the treasures of antique democracy and compare them with contemporary transformations of democracy in political, social and everyday spheres.  

Technical democracy as a challenge to urban studies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Farías, Ignacio; Blok, Anders

2016-01-01

What is technical democracy? And why does it matter for urban studies? As an introduction to this special feature, we address these questions by reflecting on To Our Friends, the 2014 manifesto of the Invisible Committee. We engage in particular its provocative diagnosis of the current situation......: power no longer resides in the modern institutions of representative democracy and the market economy; instead, power has become a matter of logistics, infrastructures and expertise. This diagnosis, we suggest, brings into view the challenge of technical democracy, that is, the democratization of techno......-scientific expertise and the instauration of forms of lasting collaboration among experts and laypeople. Urban politics, we claim, increasingly turns around socio-technical controversies and it is in terms of the politics of expertise that we should analyse and engage it. Building on Science and Technology Studies...

National Insecurity and Human Rights: Democracies Debate Counterterrorism

OpenAIRE

Brysk, Alison; Shafir, Gershon

2007-01-01

Human rights is all too often the first casualty of national insecurity. How can democracies cope with the threat of terror while protecting human rights? This timely volume compares the lessons of the United States and Israel with the "best-case scenarios" of the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, and Germany. It demonstrates that threatened democracies have important options, and democratic governance, the rule of law, and international cooperation are crucial foundations for counterterror policy.

The State of the Art in the EU Democracy Promotion Literature

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Peter Simmons

2011-02-01

Full Text Available The literature on EU democracy promotion is fragmented into a number of sub-literatures, and this makes it difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of this area of EU activity. Synthesising these literatures and the different theoretical approaches that have been taken is a necessary first step to a fuller understanding of what makes EU democracy promotion work most effectively, a task that is all the more vital given the increasingly challenging global environment that democracy promotion now faces.

Reconstruction of the democratic experience: democracy as a pedagogical belief in Dewey’s philosophy

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Carina Tonieto

2012-06-01

Full Text Available The present article aims at reconstructing and analyzing the reasons that led the American educator John Dewey to elect democracy as the pedagogical belief of his educational philosophy. In order to do so, fi rstly our work will briefl y retrace the origins of democracy at the Greek paideia, in order to analyze the reasons that led Deweyto choose democracy as the main reference of his pedagogical belief. Finally, we will discuss the democratic concept of education on Dewey’s work Democracy and Education and the reasons why the author uses science, philosophy, and education as instruments of reconstruction of the democracy.

The Problem of Citizens: E-Democracy for Actually Existing Democracy

OpenAIRE

Daniel Kreiss

2015-01-01

This article argues that many contemporary e-democracy projects, particularly in the United States, have at their heart a model of atomistic, independent, rational, and general-interest citizens. As such, these projects, variously grouped under the labels of e-governance, online deliberation, open government, and civic technology, often assume a broad shared consensus about collective definitions of “public problems” that both does not exist and sidesteps debates over what these problems are ...

Is It Culture or Democracy? The Impact of Democracy and Culture on Happiness

Science.gov (United States)

Dorn, David; Fischer, Justina A. V.; Kirchgassner, Gebhard; Sousa-Poza, Alfonso

2007-01-01

We analyze the relation between democracy and perceived subjective well-being while controlling for other relevant determinants such as culture measured by languages. We conduct a cross-national analysis covering 28 countries using data from the 1998 International Social Survey Programme. Contrasting existing empirical evidence, we observe a…

Talking about European Democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Besselink, L.; Reestman, J.H.

This editorial comment asserts that, instead of merely conceiving of the challenges to the foundational values common to the Union and member states in terms of the Rule of Law, it is necessary to address democracy as the political founding quality of Union and member states. In doing so, we must

E-democracy in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hoff, Jens Villiam

Already in the 1970's and -80's high hopes for democracy were connected with the rise of technologies like cableTV and digital telephones. This outburst of 'utopian energy' was greatly accelerated with the breakthrough of the Internet in the beginning/middle of the 1990's, and both politicians...

Deliberative democracy in health care: current challenges and future prospects

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Safaei J

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Jalil Safaei Department of Economics, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, CanadaBackground: There is a vast body of literature on deliberative, participative, or engaged democracy. In the area of health care there is a rapidly expanding literature on deliberative democracy as embodied in various notions of public engagement, shared decision-making (SDM, patient-centered care, and patient/care provider autonomy over the past few decades. It is useful to review such literature to get a sense of the challenges and prospects of introducing deliberative democracy in health care.Objective: This paper reviews the key literature on deliberative democracy and SDM in health care settings with a focus on identifying the main challenges of promoting this approach in health care, and recognizing its progress so far for mapping out its future prospects in the context of advanced countries.Method: Several databases were searched to identify the literature pertinent to the subject of this study. A total of 56 key studies in English were identified and reviewed carefully for indications and evidence of challenges and/or promising avenues of promoting deliberative democracy in health care.Results: Time pressure, lack of financial motivation, entrenched professional interests, informational imbalance, practical feasibility, cost, diversity of decisions, and contextual factors are noted as the main challenges. As for the prospects, greater clarity on conception of public engagement and policy objectives, real commitment of the authorities to public input, documenting evidence of the effectiveness of public involvement, development of patient decision supports, training of health professionals in SDM, and use of multiple and flexible methods of engagement leadership suited to specific contexts are the main findings in the reviewed literature.Conclusion: Seeking deliberative democracy in health care is both challenging and rewarding. The

Democracy and Environmental Integration in Decision-Making

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Figueroa, Maria

This dissertation presents an evaluation of the democratic qualities of decision-making processes for large transport infrastructure projects in two Scandinavian countries: Denmark and Sweden. The study uncovers criteria from aggregative and deliberative theories of democracy to create a qualitat......This dissertation presents an evaluation of the democratic qualities of decision-making processes for large transport infrastructure projects in two Scandinavian countries: Denmark and Sweden. The study uncovers criteria from aggregative and deliberative theories of democracy to create...... exemplify points of democratic strength and fragility in the decision processes. A robust system of participatory procedures exists, in both countries, as part of the planning tradition or as part of the legally mandatory environmental assessment procedures. This robust system shows fragility for government...... discourses to the state. While the role of civil society in deliberation is crucial, the study accepts that not all that goes on in civil society is conducive either to more democracy or greater environmental integration. The relevant discussion is then how to deal with differences that may have...

Intelligence, democracy, and international environmental commitment.

Science.gov (United States)

Obydenkova, Anastassia; Salahodjaev, Raufhon

2016-05-01

This paper investigates the determinants of nations' commitment to environmental protection at the international level by focusing on the role of national intelligence and the level of democracy. The national intelligence is measured by nation's IQ scores. The findings based on a sample of 152 nations provide strong evidence that intelligence has statistically significant impact on ratification of international environmental agreements, and the countries with IQ 10-points above global average are 23% more likely to sign multilateral environmental agreements than others. The findings also demonstrate that it is the combination of high-level of intelligence of nations and democracy, that likely result in international environmental commitments. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America

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Greg Robinson

2010-03-01

Full Text Available

The confinement of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, often called the Japanese American internment, has been described as the worst official civil rights violation of modern U. S. history. Greg Robinson not only offers a bold new understanding of these events but also studies them within a larger time frame and from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newly discovered material, Robinson provides a backstory of confinement that reveals for the first time the extent of the American government's surveillance of Japanese communities in the years leading up to war and the construction of what officials termed "concentration camps" for enemy aliens. He also considers the aftermath of confinement, including the place of Japanese Americans in postwar civil rights struggles, the long movement by former camp inmates for redress, and the continuing role of the camps as touchstones for nationwide commemoration and debate. Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes.

A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Greg Robinson

2010-03-01

Full Text Available The confinement of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, often called the Japanese American internment, has been described as the worst official civil rights violation of modern U. S. history. Greg Robinson not only offers a bold new understanding of these events but also studies them within a larger time frame and from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newly discovered material, Robinson provides a backstory of confinement that reveals for the first time the extent of the American government's surveillance of Japanese communities in the years leading up to war and the construction of what officials termed "concentration camps" for enemy aliens. He also considers the aftermath of confinement, including the place of Japanese Americans in postwar civil rights struggles, the long movement by former camp inmates for redress, and the continuing role of the camps as touchstones for nationwide commemoration and debate. Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes.

Cognitive aspect of education for democracy

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Đurišić-Bojanović Mirosava

2005-01-01

Full Text Available Education for democracy is of particular importance for a society undergoing democratization. The paper investigates a cognitive aspect of education for democracy, and identifies psychological predispositions for the acceptance of plurality of ideas as a central indicator of democratic thinking. The acceptance of plurality is defined as the ability of an individual to consider different arguments in controversial topics, to accept the existence of different ideas in a discussion as well as different explanations. This psychological phenomenon integrates certain cognitive affective and conative characteristics. The acceptance of plurality of ideas is a fundamental prerequisite for democratic communication, therefore a prerequisite for the creation of democratic climate in a society. The concept of cognitive style has been examined from the perspective of different research traditions in an attempt to identify a psychological profile of cognitive style, provisionally named pluralist profile, which would help an individual behave democratically. The paper also studies the connection between the manner of thinking, personality characteristics and cognitive style. It is the author’s conclusion that it is reasonable to assume that there are ways to encourage the development of pluralistic cognitive style by practicing the acceptance of different ideas through teaching process which would significantly improve the effectiveness of education for democracy.

Participatory Democracy in Theory and Practice: A Case Study of Local Government in South Africa

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Ntsikelelo Breakfast

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The idea of democracy is a curious oneand puzzling. There is reason for this;everyone talks about democracy no matter whether their views are on the left, centreor right of the political spectrum. Various politicians, regimes, whether in Africa, Europe or America claim to be democratic;yet what each says and does is usuallydifferent. Democracy as a practice is supposed to bestow rules, laws and decisions that are justifiable on democraticgrounds. Democracy also has evolved through social struggles. This article examines the practice of democracy withinthe context of local government in South Africa, and is an attempt to explore the concept of democracy without escaping other historical aspects of the idea and practice. From a methodological standpoint, this article is based on a literature assessment. Lastly and most importantly, this paper has made a scholarly contribution to the scholarship of Political Science and Public Administration with regard to the nexus between democracy and public participation at local government level in South Africa.

Measure and collapse of participatory democracy in a two-party system

Science.gov (United States)

Sznajd, Jozef

2015-10-01

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so (Galileo Galilei). According to the above sentence we do not ask why we need to measure democracy but if it is possible to measure something which is not unequivocally defined. Although, it is unlikely a final agreement on the definition of democracy, the idea that it is a form of governance based on collective decision making seems to be uncontested. On the premise that in the high-quality democracy citizens (agents) not only must have equal participation rights but must want to participate in shaping decision, as an effective measure of democracy in a two party political system we propose the percentage of the total population that actually voted in a given elections only for two major parties. Thus, we disregard not only nonvoters but also smaller parties voters whom votes will not have a substantial impact on the election and consequently they will not be in the loop, even theoretically. To describe such a system a sociophysics model based on the $S=1$ Ising model (Blume-Capel) is proposed. The measure of democracy, V_D index, as a function of inter-party conflict is analyzed.

Cryptographically Secure Multiparty Computation and Distributed Auctions Using Homomorphic Encryption

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Anunay Kulshrestha

2017-12-01

Full Text Available We introduce a robust framework that allows for cryptographically secure multiparty computations, such as distributed private value auctions. The security is guaranteed by two-sided authentication of all network connections, homomorphically encrypted bids, and the publication of zero-knowledge proofs of every computation. This also allows a non-participant verifier to verify the result of any such computation using only the information broadcasted on the network by each individual bidder. Building on previous work on such systems, we design and implement an extensible framework that puts the described ideas to practice. Apart from the actual implementation of the framework, our biggest contribution is the level of protection we are able to guarantee from attacks described in previous work. In order to provide guidance to users of the library, we analyze the use of zero knowledge proofs in ensuring the correct behavior of each node in a computation. We also describe the usage of the library to perform a private-value distributed auction, as well as the other challenges in implementing the protocol, such as auction registration and certificate distribution. Finally, we provide performance statistics on our implementation of the auction.

Constructive interference between disordered couplings enhances multiparty entanglement in quantum Heisenberg spin glass models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mishra, Utkarsh; Rakshit, Debraj; Prabhu, R; Sen, Aditi; Sen, Ujjwal

2016-01-01

Disordered systems form one of the centrestages of research in many body sciences and lead to a plethora of interesting phenomena and applications. A paradigmatic disordered system consists of a one-dimensional array of quantum spin-1/2 particles, governed by the Heisenberg spin glass Hamiltonian with natural or engineered quenched disordered couplings in an external magnetic field. These systems allow disorder-induced enhancement for bipartite and multipartite observables. Here we show that simultaneous application of independent quenched disorders results in disorder-induced enhancement, while the same is absent with individual application of the same disorders. We term the phenomenon as constructive interference and the corresponding parameter stretches as the Venus regions. Interestingly, it has only been observed for multiparty entanglement and is absent for the single- and two-party physical quantities. (paper)

Reconstruction of the democratic experience: democracy as a pedagogical belief in Dewey’s philosophy

OpenAIRE

Carina Tonieto; Altair Alberto Fávero

2012-01-01

The present article aims at reconstructing and analyzing the reasons that led the American educator John Dewey to elect democracy as the pedagogical belief of his educational philosophy. In order to do so, fi rstly our work will briefl y retrace the origins of democracy at the Greek paideia, in order to analyze the reasons that led Deweyto choose democracy as the main reference of his pedagogical belief. Finally, we will discuss the democratic concept of education on Dewey’s work Democracy an...

Problem of Democracy Promotion in the of Postcolonial Feminism

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Vladislav A. Muzalevskiy

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the problems of democratization as a neocolonial practice. The author argues that the spread of democracy is similar in many respects to colonialism and civilizing mission as universal and even messianic phenomena. He notes that both of these phenomena, despite the similarity of their origin, have different "gender basis" (colonialism has characteristics of masculinity and civilizing mission - of femininity. The author reviewed the history of transforming the concepts of "colonialism" and "civilizing mission". Results parallels between the two phenomena are analyzed as a specific intellectual and public discourse in a particular era influenced the formation of both phenomena. Examples of national civilizing projects, their intellectual potential and influence on contemporary world politics are also considered. The echoes of colonialism and civilizing mission are visible in US and the EU doctrines of democracy promotion. Examining the evolution of approaches to democratization, the author finds the differences in strategic culture of the United States and the European Union: if the American establishment have a propensity to masculine practice of democracy promotion ("democratic enlargement", the project "Greater Middle East", etc., and European leadership prefers feminine practices. In terms of the post-colonial feminism, this approach does not give these actors any special benefits, as it offers the ineffective governing strategy of the local population, not taking into account, and often denying the specific cultural environment of democracy promotion, paying more attention to institutional characteristics (lack of certain civil rights and freedoms, lack of transparency in the work of public authorities, etc.. The author notes that the current strategy of democracy promotion, though being more complex, creates the effect of "double discrimination", when both the local people and local women (imposing image of "a free and

Democracy, justice and state of exception: past present

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Tásso Araújo Brito

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Violence against portions of society, disbelief in democratic institutions and agents of the state who inflict torture against those who are in their custody are elements that corrode the Brazilian democracy. Between the past of the military-civilian dictatorship and the current moment we realize how practices that have been considered exceptions have become rules that affect the life of many Brazilian citizens. The present paper investigates these political experiences to ask which democracy have we been living in.

Globalization, Democracy, and Social Movements: The Educational Potential of Activism

Science.gov (United States)

Hytten, Kathy

2016-01-01

In this essay, I explore the contemporary value of John Dewey's conception of democracy to addressing the challenges of neoliberal globalization. I begin by describing his vision of democracy as a way of life that requires habits of experimentalism, pluralism, and hope. I then suggest that contemporary forms of mobilization, resistance, and…

An Appraisal of Mass Media Role in Consolidating Democracy in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This study therefore critically assessed the performance of Nigerian mass media in consolidating democracy. The study is of the view that the mass contributed immensely to the return of democracy in Nigeria. This the media did through their critical criticism of the military juntas, mobilization of the citizens to participate in ...

Delegated Democracy. The Siting of Swedish Nuclear Waste

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Johansson, Hanna Sofia (Stockholm Univ., SCORE, SE-106 91 Stockholm (Sweden))

2009-12-15

This paper aims to characterise Swedish democracy in connection with the disposal of Swedish nuclear waste. To this end, an analysis is performed to discern which democratic ideals that can be found within the nuclear waste issue. The study analyses various actors' views on democracy and expertise as well as their definitions of the nuclear waste issue, and discusses this from the perspective of democracy theory. Which definitions that become influential has democratic implications. In addition, various actors' possible attempts to help or hinder other actors from gaining influence over the nuclear waste issue in the four municipalities are studied. In connection with the case studies the aim of the paper can be narrowed to comprise the following questions: Which democratic ideals can be found within SKB's siting process during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process during the site investigations? Which democratic ideals were influential during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process?

Delegated Democracy. The Siting of Swedish Nuclear Waste

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Johansson, Hanna Sofia

2009-12-01

This paper aims to characterise Swedish democracy in connection with the disposal of Swedish nuclear waste. To this end, an analysis is performed to discern which democratic ideals that can be found within the nuclear waste issue. The study analyses various actors' views on democracy and expertise as well as their definitions of the nuclear waste issue, and discusses this from the perspective of democracy theory. Which definitions that become influential has democratic implications. In addition, various actors' possible attempts to help or hinder other actors from gaining influence over the nuclear waste issue in the four municipalities are studied. In connection with the case studies the aim of the paper can be narrowed to comprise the following questions: Which democratic ideals can be found within SKB's siting process during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process during the site investigations? Which democratic ideals were influential during the feasibility studies and in the consultation process?

Anmeldelse af Adam Przeworski: Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government og Guillermo O'Donnell: Democracy, Agency and the State

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Seeberg, Michael

2012-01-01

One of the most prominent debates within the democratization literature has revolved around the question of how to conceptualize democracy. Recent contributions from two leading scholars in the field, Przeworski and O’Donnell, show that this is still a contentious topic. Przeworski and O’Donnell ......One of the most prominent debates within the democratization literature has revolved around the question of how to conceptualize democracy. Recent contributions from two leading scholars in the field, Przeworski and O’Donnell, show that this is still a contentious topic. Przeworski and O...

Discussing the Prospects of European Democracy with Alexis de Tocqueville

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Dalia Eidukienė

2013-04-01

Full Text Available This article analyses the concept of democracy proposed by Alexis de Tocqueville, a famous French historian and sociologist. Special attention is paid to the definition of democracy, the dialectics of freedom and equality as well as the issues of relationship between democracy and centralization of power, democracy and individualism, and democracy and the tyranny of the majority. Tocqueville‘s liberal theory is an excellent example of the political project of the early modern period; it was in step with or, in many cases, ahead of France‘s political evolution, thereby contributing to the formation of the intellectual climate of the later 20th century. More than that, Tocqueville‘s political thought remains relevant even today. He is valued as an innovator, who, as Zbigniew Brzezinski put it, „understood earlier and interpreted better than anyone the uniqueness of the American experiment... His judgements are to this day remarkably prescient and incisive“ (Brzezinski 2011. Consequently, Tocqueville‘s book Democracy in America is a text that is worth being reread. In each political period the readers of this text rediscover anew the meaning of the messages communicated by the author. This depends on the political consciousness, political culture and the „quality“ of the recipients, i.e. on their ability to process and adapt the received information to their times, their state, their specific situation or a specific subject. Tocqueville invites his readers to engage in communicative reading (i.e. dialogue and discussions, which is an important part of modern political communication and political practice. It is also one of the most important attributes of politics and a reliable instrument that makes it easier to form modern political theories and solve political problems. 

Global value perceptions: The legitimising functions of Western representations of democracy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Staerklé, C.; Falomir-Pichastor, J.M.; Pereira, A.L.; Berent, J.; Butera, F.

2015-01-01

This paper argues that a fundamental antagonism between democracy and nondemocracy organises lay thinking on global issues. We review key findings of a long-standing experimental research programme that examined the "Democracy-as-value" hypothesis across a variety of political and social contexts.

Democracy, globalization and ethnic violence

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bezemer, D.J.; Jong-A-Pin, R.

Bezemer, Dirk, and Jong-A-Pin, Richard Democracy, globalization and ethnic violence Do democratization and globalization processes combine to increase the incidence of violence in developing and emerging economies? The present paper examines this hypothesis by a study of internal violence in

Understanding Democracy and Development Traps Using a Data-Driven Approach

Science.gov (United States)

Ranganathan, Shyam; Nicolis, Stamatios C.; Spaiser, Viktoria; Sumpter, David J.T.

2015-01-01

Abstract Methods from machine learning and data science are becoming increasingly important in the social sciences, providing powerful new ways of identifying statistical relationships in large data sets. However, these relationships do not necessarily offer an understanding of the processes underlying the data. To address this problem, we have developed a method for fitting nonlinear dynamical systems models to data related to social change. Here, we use this method to investigate how countries become trapped at low levels of socioeconomic development. We identify two types of traps. The first is a democracy trap, where countries with low levels of economic growth and/or citizen education fail to develop democracy. The second trap is in terms of cultural values, where countries with low levels of democracy and/or life expectancy fail to develop emancipative values. We show that many key developing countries, including India and Egypt, lie near the border of these development traps, and we investigate the time taken for these nations to transition toward higher democracy and socioeconomic well-being. PMID:26487983

Understanding Democracy and Development Traps Using a Data-Driven Approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Ranganathan, Shyam; Nicolis, Stamatios C; Spaiser, Viktoria; Sumpter, David J T

2015-03-01

Methods from machine learning and data science are becoming increasingly important in the social sciences, providing powerful new ways of identifying statistical relationships in large data sets. However, these relationships do not necessarily offer an understanding of the processes underlying the data. To address this problem, we have developed a method for fitting nonlinear dynamical systems models to data related to social change. Here, we use this method to investigate how countries become trapped at low levels of socioeconomic development. We identify two types of traps. The first is a democracy trap, where countries with low levels of economic growth and/or citizen education fail to develop democracy. The second trap is in terms of cultural values, where countries with low levels of democracy and/or life expectancy fail to develop emancipative values. We show that many key developing countries, including India and Egypt, lie near the border of these development traps, and we investigate the time taken for these nations to transition toward higher democracy and socioeconomic well-being.

More democracy through plebiscite?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Evers, T.

1986-01-01

The author has the opinion, a plebiscite means only a limited enlargement of democracy. The plebiscite should be formed out as a right of veto, which prohibits concrete political measures of the government or legal projects (Kalkar, Wackersdorf). The winning of time to continue the discussion is an advantage. Finally a general change of consciousness is possible. (CW) [de

Equality, Human Dignity and Minorities: A Social Democracy in Construction

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Jacson Gross

2015-12-01

Full Text Available This article deals with equality, human dignity and the need to build a social democracy. Bringing equality concepts in a broad sense as foundation work, is set to develop writing by making some remarks on the dignity of the individual and minorities, often not heard, even within democratic scenarios since democracy is the voice the most by hiding voices and demands of sectors or groups excluded from the agenda. Minorities such as LGBT, black, residents of peripheral areas of large cities, among others, do not have their demands heard from this idea, we seek a concept of social democracy, which is wider than just the voice of the majority.

Politics and population health: Testing the impact of electoral democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Patterson, Andrew C; Veenstra, Gerry

2016-07-01

This study addresses questions of whether and why electoral democracies have better health than other nations. After devising a replicable approach to missing data, we compare political, economic, and health-related data for 168 nations collected annually from 1960 through 2010. Regression models estimate that electoral democracies have 11 years of longer life expectancy on average and 62.5% lower rates of infant mortality. The association with life expectancy reduces markedly after controlling for GDP, while a combination of factors may explain the democratic advantage in infant health. Results suggest that income inequality associates independently with both health outcomes but does not mediate their associations with democracy. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Constitutionalizing secularism, alternative secularisms or liberal-democratic constitutionalism?
A critical reading of some Turkish, ECtHR and Indian Supreme Court cases on ‘secularism’

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Veit Bader

2010-11-01

Full Text Available In recent debates on the constitutional status of 'secularism' we can discern three positions. The first tries to overcome the absence of 'secularism' in most liberal-democratic constitutions by developing a more robust theory of constitutional secularism. The second develops theories of 'alternative secularisms'. The third, defended in this article, argues that we should drop secularism as a 'cacophonous' concept from our constitutional and legal language and replace it by liberal-democratic constitutionalism. I develop an analytical taxonomy of twelve different meanings of 'secularism' based on a comparative study of Turkish and Indian Supreme Court cases on secularism, and demonstrate that they are incompatible with each other and with the hard core of liberal-democratic constitutions. Next, I criticize the respective rulings in the Turkish and Indian context. Particularly in 'militant democracies', the appeal to a principle of 'secularism' turns out to be inimical to the liberal and to the democratic 'constitutional essentials'. I end with some normative recommendations on the role of constitutional review and judicial activism.

Evangelical Religion and Evangelical Democracy: Lincoln’s Legacy

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David Goldfield

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Evangelical religion and evangelical democracy reinforced each other in nineteenth-century America. The spread of evangelical Christianity and democracy across a continent justified the wars against Native Americans and Mexico, and provided the moral framework for the fight against slavery which many Americans came to see as incompatible with Protestant Christianity and democratic government. The problem with mixing religion and politics in this manner was that political issues became moral issues and, therefore, more difficult to deal with in the political process.

Designing For Democracy: Using Design Activism to Re-negotiate the Roles and Rights for Patients

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Knutz, Eva; Markussen, Thomas; Mårbjerg Thomsen, Signe

2014-01-01

there are already a number of approaches available which in one way or the other address the relationship between design, democracy and power. We provide an account of participatory design, adversarial design and design activism thereby pointing towards design’s potential for re-distributing power and authority......In this paper we focus on ‘patient-democracy’ and ‘shared decision-making’ seen from the perspective of design practice and design research. In the research on democracy in healthcare it is rarely questioned what forms of democracy underlies these concepts. We have examined three different theories...... of democracy and the democratic practices that belong to each of these. For designers working to increase patient democracy it is of vital importance to be able to distinguish different structures underlying democratic practices and to work out methods for prototyping democracy. In design research...

Transitional Democracy, Legitimacy and the European Union

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Patricia Kaplánová

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Nowadays the ongoing global crisis has triggered an issue how to set up a theoretical framework of global governance. The integration to a supranational level of governance has been a contemporary process of democratization in recent decades. To analyze the institutionalization of global governance means to recognize a normative idea of democracy. The theory of international relations demonstrates that there are four normative models of democracy at the supranational level of governance. In my opinion, a crucial difference of the institutionalization is a concept of legitimacy of global democratic regime. Because of a divided understanding of legitimacy at the transnational level of governance is difficult to find a consensus in which way should be a transnational democracy framed. A dual legitimacy in a supranational organization like the European Union also triggers a specific democratic deficit. My point of view corresponds with the division of transnational orders in normative way and its correspondence to legitimacy. Cla rifying the duality of legitimacy can help us not only to solve all globalizing problems but of course to decide in which way we want to make the supranational organizations work.

Designing the Future of Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pichlmair, Martin

2015-01-01

Creating a simulation of Democracy and its future challenges is a fruitful exercise in design. This short paper describes a different use of a simulation that the traditional training via playing. Instead of playing, the creation of the simulation is at the center of attention....

Mass Media and Ideology Dissemination against Democracy in Thailand

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Songyot Buaphuean

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The study on “Mass Media and Ideology Dissemination against Democracy in Thailand” is qualitative study with the method of documentary research from text books, books, newspapers and online newspapers to find the definition of democracy which was the system of forming the elected government with the principle of sovereignty, majority, equality, freedom and laws. However, some mass media had false consciousness of democracy which included: election brought bad quality politicians; recruitment of persons to form the government was better than election; promotion of superstition; one man one vote was not for Thai society; capitalism deteriorated the nation; The Armed Forces worked for the people. Another concept was the idea that believed Thai society was praising the elite groups. The ideology said the society should obey the senior citizen who had morals, and the Armed Forces forced people to obey.

POLITICAL MIGRATION, THE ROMANIAN POLITICIANS’ "DISEASE". COMMENTS ON CONSTITUTIONAL COURT DECISION NO. 761/2015

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Claudia GILIA

2015-07-01

Full Text Available After 1989, the Romanian society has been in a continuous constitutional, legislative, and political effervescence. Building a democratic state, a state of the rule of law, based on fundamental values, such as human dignity, freedom, fundamental rights and freedoms, political pluralism, is a long process. Democratic, fair, free and regular elections are a crucial element for the proper functioning of the political institutions. But are they sufficient to ensure a functional and representative democracy? Our answer is no. There are many other elements that are needed in order to achieve such an important goal to a functioning society. One of these elements which we would like mention is, in our opinion, important to progress and representative democracy of any state: the legitimacy and political stability of the bodies exercising power at all levels. In our study, we address a number of issues concerning a phenomenon that grinds the foundation of the representative democracy, namely political migration. In our opinion, this phenomenon, that has invaded the political life in Romania, is one of the serious "diseases" of both the political class, and the Romanian society. Obtaining power at any price seems to justify any political treason, metaphorically called “political migration”. In our study, the phenomenon of the political migration will be analyzed mostly under Constitutional Court Decision no. 761 of 17 December 2014 concerning the unconstitutionality of the Law on the approval of Government Emergency Ordinance no. 55/2014 regulating measures concerning the local public administration. By Ordinance no. 55/2014, Pandora's Box has been opened once again within the local public administration as, for a period of 45 days, the local elected were provided the permission to express in writing, only once, their option of either becoming members of a certain political party or national minority organization, or becoming independent without losing

Security and Democracy in Southern Africa

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Liberal democracy has the following principal institutional features: .... The expectation, held by many donors, international financial institutions (IFIs), and ...... The Public Accounts Committee is led by an opposition member, and has become ...

The Pitfalls of a "Democracy Promotion" Project for Women of Iraq

Science.gov (United States)

El-Kassem, Nadeen

2008-01-01

"Democracy promotion" as part of a larger project of 'reconstruction' is hailed in mainstream academia and in policy circles as an essential component of rebuilding the state and civil society in post-conflict situations. Here "democracy promotion" refers exclusively to the promotion of political representation and…

The Global Crisis and the Assault on Democracy

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Juego, Bonn; Schmidt, Johannes Dragsbæk

The paper argues that the current global capitalist crisis entails an assault on democracy. Since crisis connotes danger and opportunity, the recent crisis appears to be a danger to democracy but an opportunity to its antithetical ideals. At the international level, multilateral institutions have...... seized the moment to reaffirm the perpetuation of the discursive and structural hegemony of neoliberalism. In East and Southeast Asia, states and regional organisations have revived arguments for the institutional justification of authoritarian liberalism in the region. And in the US and Europe, attempts...

Aggregate Democracyand Deliberative Democracy: An Inevitable Practical Circle

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Macarena Marey

2011-12-01

Full Text Available The paper sets forth programmatically a series of conditions necessary for a deliberative theory of democracy to be able to account for the normative value of the two fundamental principles of democracy: human rights and popular sovereignty. The starting point is the question of whether aggregate conceptions are capable ofdesigning collective decision-making procedures in which those two principles are mutually entailed. The article emphasizes the importance for democratic procedures to include a reciprocal justification requirement that cannot be fully satisfied by aggregate or agonistic conceptions.

Democracy in a Post-Castro Cuba?

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Henry, Drew

2004-01-01

.... The theories of leading democracy and economic theorists are applied to the post-Castro conflict scenario as relevant issues to be addressed by a new Cuban government and the United States in a Cuban...

Cryptanalysis on the improved multiparty quantum secret sharing protocol based on the GHZ state

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen Xiubo; Yang Shuai; Su Yuan; Yang Yixian

2012-01-01

Recently, Liu et al (2011 Phys. Scr. 84045015) pointed out that the multiparty quantum secret sharing (MQSS) protocol based on the GHZ state (Hwang et al 2011 Phys. Scr. 83045004) is insecure. They found that an inside participant can deduce half of the sender's secret information directly just by his piece of the secret. In order to resist this attack, an improvement was put forward. However, in this paper, we find that Liu et al's improved protocol is still insecure. We give details of three attack strategies to steal the secret information. It is shown that the eavesdropper can steal half or all of the secret information. Furthermore, a simple and ingenious MQSS protocol is proposed. We perform explicit cryptanalysis to prove that our improved protocol can resist the attacks from both the outside attackers and the inside participants, even the collusion attack.

Althingi´s Keeper: Changes in the Constitutional Powers of the President of Iceland

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Björg Thorarensen

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article focuses on the constitutional role of the president of Iceland when the republic was established in 1944, and the evolution of this role during the time Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has been in office. The study shows that the creation of a republic involved hardly any changes in the constitutional role of the head of state neither in regard to executive nor legislative powers. Thus the authors reject the theory that the creation of a republic introduced a dual authority structure, consisting of Althingi and a powerful president, which characterizes semi-presidentialim. However, despite the fact that the text of the constitution, regarding the presidency, has not been changed since 1944, the political importance of the president has increased in recent years. This is mainly the result of Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson´s interpretation of the constitutional role of the president, as well as changes in public attitudes regarding democracy and the role of the president. According to this interpretation, the president acts as Althingi´s keeper who acts as a check on the majority rule of Althingi contrary to what was decided in 1944. The authors maintain that in the absence of formal constitutional changes, were the role of the presidency is better defined; the power of the president vis-à-vis the cabinet and parliament may continue to grow.

Political economy. On the endogeneity of political preferences: evidence from individual experience with democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola; Schündeln, Matthias

2015-03-06

Democracies depend on the support of the general population, but little is known about the determinants of this support. We investigated whether support for democracy increases with the length of time spent under the system and whether preferences are thus affected by the political system. Relying on 380,000 individual-level observations from 104 countries over the years 1994 to 2013, and exploiting individual-level variation within a country and a given year in the length of time spent under democracy, we find evidence that political preferences are endogenous. For new democracies, our findings imply that popular support needs time to develop. For example, the effect of around 8.5 more years of democratic experience corresponds to the difference in support for democracy between primary and secondary education. Copyright © 2015, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Culture´Contribution to Democracy: Culture, nationalisme and Populism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Duelund, Peter

2018-01-01

Developments on culture, populism and democracy in Europe. Reasons to populism?   Is populism a new phenomenon? Populism as catch-all label? Common indicators of populism How to deal with populists? Proposal to a comparative COE study on populism......Developments on culture, populism and democracy in Europe. Reasons to populism?   Is populism a new phenomenon? Populism as catch-all label? Common indicators of populism How to deal with populists? Proposal to a comparative COE study on populism...

Thomas Docherty. Culture and a New Experience of Democracy

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Erik S. RORABACK

2006-10-01

Full Text Available Thomas Docherty’s freshly printed volume from Stanford University Press, Aesthetic Democracy, is requisite reading for all those thinking beings out there interested in the question of the inter-relation and even inter-articulation between culture and experience for a possible new encounter with the political that would inch toward a truer form of democracy for our current postmodern social spheres and spaces. Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the University of Warwick, long ...

Investigating Primary School Teachers' Perception about Democracy through Metaphor Analysis

Science.gov (United States)

Nasirci, Hasan; Sadik, Fatma

2018-01-01

The aim of this study is to examine democracy perception of classroom teachers via metaphor analysis. Study group for research is formed of 253 classroom teachers. "Democracy Metaphors Questionnaire" (DMQ) has been used in collecting data. Content analysis has been used on analysis of qualitative data of research and descriptive…

The influence of ICT on modern democracy. Selected dilemmas of electronic democracy

OpenAIRE

Musiał-Karg, Magdalena

2016-01-01

Due to rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies in all areas of public life, the influence of ICT on democracy has been becoming over the last years an increasingly popular research subject. Application of modern technologies influences work, education, trade, services and social relations on the professional, public and private space. ICTs are also applied to facilitate (and adapt technologically) processes that occur between political institutions, politic...

The Western Way? Democracy and the Media Assistance Model

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Daire Higgins

2015-01-01

Full Text Available International media assistance took off during a time where the ideological extremes of USA vs. USSR were set to disappear. Following the Cold War, international relations focused on democracy building, and nurturing independent media was embraced as a key part of this strategy. Fukayama called it the ‘End of History’, the fact that all other ideologies had fallen and Western style democracy was set to become the one common ideology. The US and UK led the way in media assistance, with their liberal ideas of a free press, bolstered by free market capitalism. America was the superpower, and forged the way around the globe with its beacon of democracy. Under that guiding light they would bring truth, accuracy, freedom of expression and independent reporting to the countries which had so long lived under the shadow of communism, or authoritarian media systems. This is what propelled and justified American foreign policy, and their media assistance, for many years. Much work was thus carried out in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet satellites, but many now question the impact and legacy of these projects. When the US and UK spoke of media assistance they seemed to mean ‘free market’. These days, the ‘democracy promoters’ focus has turned more to Africa and the Middle East. The ideology is apparently the same: to help establish and support democracy with a stronger and more independent media. But with Western economies, and their media systems, in crisis, the relevance of this media assistance model is questioned. This essay looks at the history of media assistance and the ongoing debate on the impact of media assistance over the long term, its motives and the new balance of power appearing in international media development.

Critical Viewing and Participatory Democracy.

Science.gov (United States)

Cohen, Jodi R.

1994-01-01

Illustrates ways that the work of some communication scholars with resistant, oppositional, and critical audiences does not, however, endorse active public life. Attempts to realign the language of critical viewing with the goals of participatory democracy by suggesting qualities of critical viewing that are conducive to achieving and maintaining…

COMMUNITY POWER AND GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

8, Political Decentralization and Popular Alternatives: A View from the South ... Power and Grassroots Democracy, the result of a multi-country research project and .... Its roots also lie in the progressive decomposition of the two prevalent .... inequalities — inequalities based on sex, age, color, sexual orientation, and so forth.

The role of the process/case in building democracy: for a new meaning of participatory democracys O papel do processo na construção da democracia: para uma nova definição da democracia participativa

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Felipe Scalabrin

2009-12-01

Full Text Available Democracy is in crisis. We no longer feel represented, no longer is the people summoned in an authentic way; it is now a mere icon; it is now only a facet of what should be a whole. Now a new assumption is needed, based on enabling maximum development of individual guarantees and ensuring that the State fulfills its constitutionally established functions. It is the unrestricted participation that will characterize participatory democracy, together with broad access to the Judiciary Power – which comes in the scenario as a real democratic leader. In this way, as a means of inclusion for all citizens, the process/case takes a political role (beyond the law as a device that allows the judge to assess the multiple interests that are hierarchically set by the society and, finally, to bring law to life, thus making democracy real.A democracia está em crise, não mais nos sentimos representados, não mais o povo é invocado de maneira autêntica, ora é mero ícone, ora é apenas faceta do que deveria ser um todo. Necessário um novo pressuposto, calcado em possibilitar o máximo desenvolvimento das garantias individuais e de assegurar que o Estado cumpra suas funções constitucionalmente estabelecidas. É a participação irrestrita que caracterizará a democracia participativa, mesclando-se com o amplo acesso ao Poder Judiciário – que surge no cenário democrático como autêntico protagonista. Nessa senda, como meio de inclusão de qualquer cidadão, o processo adquire relevo em seu aspecto político (para além do jurídico, como instrumento que possibilita ao juiz avaliar os múltiplos interesses hierarquizados pela sociedade e, por fim, dar vida ao direito, concretizando, assim, o pressuposto democrático.

American Album: 200 Years of Constitutional Democracy. Law in U.S. History. Law in Social Studies Series. Instructor's Edition.

Science.gov (United States)

Suter, Coral; Croddy, Marshall

Arranged chronologically from the Constitution's initial implementation in the late 18th century to the civil rights movement of the 1950 and 60s, this volume contains eight study units. The units address various roles in the U.S. legal system and corresponding legal processes, while raising the following constitutional issues: (1) the role and…

Multiparty-controlled teleportation of an arbitrary m-qudit state with a pure entangled quantum channel

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhou, Ping; Li, Xi-Han; Deng, Fu-Guo; Zhou, Hong-Yu

2007-01-01

We present a general scheme for multiparty-controlled teleportation of an arbitrary m-qudit (d-dimensional quantum system) state by using non-maximally entangled states as the quantum channel. The sender performs m generalized Bell-state measurements on her 2m particles, the controllers take some single-particle measurements with the measuring basis X d and the receiver only needs to introduce one auxiliary two-level particle to extract quantum information probabilistically with the fidelity unit if he cooperates with all the controllers. All the parties can use some decoy photons to set up their quantum channel securely, which will forbid a dishonest party to eavesdrop freely. This scheme is optimal as the probability that the receiver obtains the originally unknown m-qudit state equals the entanglement of the quantum channel

The Brazilian Military Regime of 1964-1985: Legacies for Contemporary Democracy

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Timothy J. Power

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This article revisits the 21-year military dictatorship in Brazil to examine how it shaped subsequent democratic politics after the transition to civilian rule in 1985. In particular, six legacies are analysed. The paper begins by focusing on the relative legitimacy of the Brazilian military regime when compared to other dictatorships in the Southern Cone. The article then examines several variables which impact on the way politics has played out between 1985 and 2014: a high level of continuity of personnel inherited from the military period, an accentuated commitment to civil liberties (as in the Constitution of 1988, a more robust level of political competition compared to the pre-coup years, and a delayed but increasingly meaningful consideration of transitional justice issues. The article concludes by noting how mass mobilization (the street engendered the collapse of the military regime in 1983-1984, and how this strategy of collective action has been repeated on several occasions under democracy.

Educating for What Kind of Democracy? Examining the Potential of Educating for Participatory Democracy with a Case Study of Drexel University's First-Year Civic Engagement Program

Science.gov (United States)

Bartch, Catherine E. M.

2016-01-01

Youth today are participating in political and civic life in new and emerging ways--some positive and some negative--but there is scant evidence that these new forms of engagement spawn enduring forms of participation to enhance democratization at all levels in society. How, then, do we educate for democracy and for what type of democracy,…

Latin America; Recent History; Democracy; Historical Memory

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Guillermo MIRA DELLI-ZOTTI

2011-05-01

Full Text Available This article identifies the restoration of the democracy and its persistence as one of the most remarkable facts of the recent history of Latin America. Nevertheless, in the experience of the subcontinent, democracy does not appear like synonymous of democratization. Starting off with the transitions, this article is led toward a periodic analysis of the so-called democratic crossing of Latin America. At the same time, it studies the unequal incidence that the impact of the «historical memory» has had in the public sphere of countries like Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador and Guatemala, contrasting with the case of Brazil.

¿Más participación igual a mejor democracia? Acerca de la crítica a la democracia participativa // More participation equal than better democracy? On critic to participatory democracy.

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Alfredo Ramírez Nárdiz

2015-12-01

Nowadays, and in countries as Spain, the critic to the representative democracy as it is conceived in the present seems to go beyond the usual thought about the representation crisis to reach amendment to the whole levels where it is not any more asked to reform specific aspects of the representative model, but to rethink the whole model. It is not proposed a different political model than democratic one, but it is proposed a different democracy that, specially and together with the reform of the more characteristic representative institutions and elements (being the political parties the axis of these reforms, looks for a bigger participation of the citizens in public life in general and in the political decision making in particular finding in participatory democracy one of the pillars of the new proposed democratic model. The question arises when posing if this bigger citizens´ participation is compatible with the representative model and can contribute to change it improving it or if, conversely, a bigger citizens´ political participation can lead to pernicious effects, both involuntary and caused by material limitations of participatory tools, both voluntary wished by rulers and political operators than, in the name of a political improvement materialized through a bigger participation, don´t look for another thing but to reach, to keep and to increase their power even at the cost of a democratic weakening materialized in a worsening of the quality of the representative institutions of the State. It is, therefore, relevant to pose if a bigger participatory democracy necessarily leads to a better democracy, or if contrary happens. On this paper, starting from the role of participatory democracy as possible complement that helps to the improving of representative democracy, the critics to the participatory democracy are exposed and it is tried to give a proposal of answer to the question if a bigger participation is compatible with a better democracy

Democracy: Between the essentially contested concept and the agonistic practice: Connolly, Mouffe, Tully

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Sladeček Michal

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The text considers points of view of theoreticians of the radical pluralism (democracy: Connolly (William Connolly, Mouffe (Chantal Mouffe and Tully (James Tully with regard to the status and the nature of concepts in the political discourse, as well as the consequences of these conceptual presumptions to understanding democracy. The three authors emphasize the essential contestability of political concepts, the paradox of liberal democracy and the need to revise standard rational consensus theories of democracy. Also, the three authors take over the specific interpretation of Vittgenstein to the direction of political theory the centre of which consists of everyday contingent practices of politics as well as dissent about their assessment. The text analyzes the extent to which this reading is compatible to Wittgenstein's position. The author defends the opinion that the essential contestability does not imply agonism and denial of the significance of rules and tries to indicate to the points of illegitimate transition from antiessentialism to unconsensus rules. Also, the text underlines the flaws of dissent conception of democracy and social integration.

Candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Seeberg, Merete Bech; Wahman, Michael; Skaaning, Svend-Erik

2018-01-01

This article introduces a special issue on candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa. Although a burgeoning literature on African democratization has focused on the topic of electoral violence, little attention has been given to violence during party nominations...... of the involvement of electoral management bodies and external monitors, and violence often results. Rather than developing an elaborate theoretical framework on the causes of nomination violence, our ambition in this introduction is to introduce the concept of nomination violence and situate it in the literatures...... on intra-party democracy and election violence. We also offer new descriptive data on nomination rules and nomination violence across parties on the African continent. The data show that nomination violence is a prevalent problem across both democracies and electoral autocracies. However, the level...

Economic Imagination and Support For Parliamentary Democracy In Poland

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Andrzej K. Koźmiński

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Purpose: The article introduces a concept of the economic imagination, describes economic public attitudes and discusses the character of the contemporary economic imagination of Poles. Methodology: Representative survey conducted on the stratifi ed random sample of 1022 adult respondents by means of CAPI (computer assisted personal interview. Statistical analysis of data. Findings: The features perceived by public as economically benefi cial to the entire economy, particular enterprises and individuals have been ranked by the representative survey and statistically grouped into more general clusters. Those considered as good for the economy are grouped into such factors as “investment and competition”, “statism (etatism” and “progressive taxation”. The features considered as benefi cial for the enterprises are grouped into “human, social and economic capital”, “law obedience and good social relations” and “limited free market”. Personal characteristics perceived as benefi cial for individual’s economic success are grouped into “honesty, perseverance and good social relations”, “skills and diligence” and “nepotism and instrumentalism”. Intensity as well as determinants of such general value loaded convictions, and their impact on acceptance of democracy have been revealed as well. The implications: Economic imagination has to be analysed as an important factor of socio-economic system’s legitimization. Originality: Distinction and empirical defi nition of economic attitudinal syndromes at three different levels: macro-economic, enterprise and individual constitute a novelty in socio-economic research. Discussion of their determinants and wider implications constitute a new contribution to the theory of social legitimization.

Youth of Today and the Democracy of Tomorrow. Polish Students' Attitudes toward Democracy

Science.gov (United States)

Marzecki, Radoslaw; Stach, Lukasz

2016-01-01

From the perspective of over 20 years into the transformation process in post-communist countries, it seems important to be able to pose questions about the future of democracy, and, in particular, its social foundations. These questions become all the more significant, when we come to realize that it is the attitudes of 'the young of today' that…

Demography, Education, and Democracy: global trends and the case of Iran.

Science.gov (United States)

Lutz, Wolfgang; Cuaresma, Jesús Crespo; Abbasi-Shavazi, Mohammad Jalal

2010-01-01

Reconstructions and projections of populations by age, sex, and educational attainment for 120 countries since 1970 are used to assess the global relationship between improvements in human capital and democracy. Democracy is measured by the Freedom House indicator of political rights. Similar to an earlier study on the effects of improving educational attainment on economic growth, the greater age detail of this new dataset resolves earlier ambiguities about the effect of improving education as assessed using a global set of national time series. The results show consistently strong effects of improving overall levels of educational attainment, of a narrowing gender gap in education, and of fertility declines and the subsequent changes in age structure on improvements in the democracy indicator. This global relationship is then applied to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the past two decades Iran has experienced the world's most rapid fertility decline associated with massive increases in female education. The results show that based on the experience of 120 countries since 1970, Iran has a high chance of significant movement toward more democracy over the following two decades.

The Genesis of Participatory Democracy in Brazil: a Scientific (ReConstruction

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Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas Boas

2017-04-01

Full Text Available The rise of participatory democracy has often been explained by the renewal of collective action in Europe and Latin America. This review essay questions the 'movement-based' genesis of Brazilian participatory democracy by analyzing the idea of the state upon which it rests. It argues that the focus on social movements falls short of explaining the spread of participatory experiments, and that it rests on a simplified understanding of the dynamics of the Brazilian State prior to the 1980s. The argument is developed along three axes. First, the essay analyses how the 'classics' of Brazilian political sociology framed the early studies on participatory democracy. Second, it shows that even if the unifying notion of the state has been challenged, progress has focussed on the study of the democratic period. Third, it presents evidence that participation, as a practical category, was an integral part of the military regime's discourse and practice. Finally, the essay defines lines of investigation to reconsider the origins of participatory democracy in Brazil.

Islam, secularist government, and state-civil society interaction in Mozambique and South Africa since 1994

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kaarsholm, Preben

2015-01-01

This article explores state–civil society interactions in Mozambique and South Africa with a focus on Islamic groupings, and places the two countries within an Indian Ocean coastal continuum of links to East Africa, India, and the Arab world. Contrasting the histories of dominant-party rule since...... the transitions in 1994 to multiparty-ism in Mozambique and to democracy in South Africa, the article discusses the development of Islamic organisations including both transnational Sufi orders and modernist reform movements as important components in local civil societies. The article contrasts the spaces...

Malian Crisis and the Lingering Problem of Good Governance

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Jaimie Bleck

2016-11-01

Full Text Available This article draws on an original survey of 892 displaced persons in Bamako and Mopti/Sevare right before the 2013 presidential elections, which ushered Mali back into multi-party democracy. Our data demonstrates their prioritization of good governance reform as an important solution for the Malian crisis. We then leverage public opinion polling between 2014 and 2015 in Bamako to evaluate how far the government has come in good governance reform. We demonstrate Malians’ dissatisfaction with the government’s efforts to reduce corruption as well as concerns about instability in the capital.