Delegative Democracy Research Articles

Transitive delegation in social networks: Theory and experiment

This paper presents a model of delegative democracy, wherein each voter has the choice to either directly vote or delegate their vote, along with any votes delegated to them, to another voter. I examine the incentives for delegation and how this affects the quality of collective decision-making. Specifically, by assuming the delegation network to be a ring network, I analyze symmetric Nash equilibria both with and without the delegation option. A key finding is that when the delegation network is sufficiently ideologically homogeneous and large, voters are inclined to delegate their votes, even in situations where they lack knowledge about who knows what or who knows whom. Furthermore, I demonstrate that delegation facilitates improved collective decision-making. Theoretical predictions are corroborated by laboratory data.

Technocratic beliefs and delegative democratic attitudes in states of emergency: evidence from a cross-national analysis

ABSTRACT Previous research on delegative democracy has predominantly emphasized its structural aspects, leaving the individual-level determinants of support for this governance relatively unexplored. While some studies have investigated the association between trust in the president and delegative democratic attitudes (DDA), the connection between technocratic beliefs, DDA, and the context of national emergencies has been minimally addressed. This study aims to fill this research gap by examining the correlation between technocratic beliefs and DDA, specifically focusing on how emergencies influence this relationship. Analysing data from the Asian Barometer Survey and the World Values Survey, the results indicate a robust connection between individuals’ technocratic beliefs and DDA. Moreover, this correlation exhibits greater strength as a country’s level of emergency escalates. These results may provide valuable insights into our understanding of both individual and structural factors associated with public support for delegative democracy.

Analysis Pragmatical Policy of Leadership Style Dynamics

Pragmatic policy is a type of policy that prioritizes practicality and usefulness. Decision-making from this pragmatic policy has an impact on overlapping policies so that a suitable leadership style is needed to anticipate these policies. The purpose of this research is to analyze the appropriate and proportionate way of leadership style to anticipate pragmatic policies. method used. This research is a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. This research was conducted in the Men's Dormitory of Middle and High School Alexandria International Islamic School with a sample of 2 people. The instruments used are observation, interviews and documentation studies. The results showed that the situational leadership style and delegative democracy were the most proportional and suitable leadership styles in accommodating crucial, fast and pragmatic policies. This has an impact on the consideration of policy implementation that is right on target and applied properly so that each line of coordination can display the best contribution to policy.

Features of Kazakhstan’s Democratic Tranzit Model: Conceptual and Methodological Analysis

A typologically significant characteristic of the Kazakhstan model of democratic transit is the creation in Kazakhstan of a system of “super-presidential” public, in which the constitutional and legal status, functions and powers of all branches of government act as a transformed form of implementation of the principles of identitarian democracy. One of the most relevant descriptions of the features of this form is Guillermo O’Donnell’s concept of deliberative democracy. According to G. According to O’Donnell, delegative democracies are based on the premise that election to the presidency gives the winner the right to govern without resorting to the mediation of representative institutions of power. After all, the president is elected in order to be the personified embodiment of the nation, to determine and protect its interests with authority, assuming full responsibility for the fate of the country and the people. Other political institutions, for example, parties with their factionalism and permanent conflicts, are often only hindrances in the implementation of this mission. This feature of the legitimization of the political regime becomes the ideological basis for substantiating the compatibility of liberal democratic institutions with the process of personification of a political system built for a specific person.

From delegative democracy to competitive authoritarism; the place of Turkish democracy between “democracy with adjectives” and “authoritarian regimes with adjectives”

Demokrasi standartlarında ve kalitesinde her geçen gün global düzeyde bir erozyon yaşanmakta. Şüphesiz bu durum Türkiye’de de kendisini göstermekte. Aldığı ciddi eleştirilere rağmen, Türk demokrasisinin dünya demokrasileri arasındaki yerine ilişkin yapılan çalışmalar oldukça sınırlı düzeydedir. Türk demokrasisi, uzunca bir süre kendisine delegasyoncu demokrasiler arasında yer bulmakta idi. Bir “sıfatlı demokrasi” olan delegasyoncu demokrasi, pekişmemiş ve kurumsallaşmayı başaramamış demokrasilerdir. Çoğunlukçu demokrasinin bariz bir örneğidir. Öte yandan yarışmacı otoriterizmde ise bir yarış söz konusudur. Yarışma gerçektir ancak adil değildir. Bu eşitsiz ortama rağmen yine de seçimlerin kaybedilme riski vardır. Bu yönüyle yarışmacı otoriterizm, otoriter rejimlerden ayrılır. Bu çalışmada Türkiye’nin delegasyoncu demokrasi ve yarışmacı otoriterizm sarkaçları arasındaki salınımını irdelemeyi planlıyoruz.

Voting Behaviour and Power in Online Democracy: A Study of LiquidFeedback in Germany's Pirate Party

In recent years, political parties have adopted Online Delegative Democracy platforms such as LiquidFeedback to organise themselves and their political agendas via a grassroots approach. A common objection against the use of these platforms is the delegation system, where a user can delegate his vote to another user, giving rise to so-called super-voters, i.e. powerful users who receive many delegations. It has been asserted in the past that the presence of these super-voters undermines the democratic process, and therefore delegative democracy should be avoided. In this paper, we look at the emergence of super-voters in the largest delegative online democracy platform worldwide, operated by Germany’s Pirate Party. We investigate the distribution of power within the party systematically, study whether super-voters exist, and explore the influence they have on the outcome of votings conducted online. While we find that the theoretical power of super-voters is indeed high, we also observe that they use their power wisely. Super-voters do not fully act on their power to change the outcome of votes, but they vote in favour of proposals with the majority of voters in many cases thereby exhibiting a stabilising effect on the system. We use these findings to present a novel class of power indices that considers observed voting biases and gives significantly better predictions than state-of-the-art measures.

Democracia delegativa en Argentina, Presidencia 2015-2019: Antiguas democracias y república moderna

La única presidencia del Ingeniero civil Mauricio Macri fue elegida por el período de 4 años desde diciembre del 2015 al 2019 con el partido político Cambiemos en la República Argentina gracias al sistema democrático y representativo de dicho país. Resulta interesante analizarlo como un caso de ejemplo en donde las democracias delegativas surgen de las crisis. La experiencia de Cambiemos marca el inicio de una nueva e incierta transición en la Argentina, no ya de gobierno sino de régimen democrático, de la democracia delegativa a una auténtica democracia representativa y republicana. En ese sentido, delimitar las diferencias entre las antiguas democracias y la república resulta necesario para comprender la coyuntura actual en el país latinoamericano.

Democracia Delegativa en el siglo XXI: Una aproximación a las presidencias de Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010)

En el presente trabajo me propongo indagar acerca de la concepción y el ejercicio del poder por parte de Álvaro Uribe Vélez como presidente de Colombia (2002-2010). Para ello me sirvo del concepto acuñado por el politólogo Guillermo O'Donnell, democracia delegativa. Bajo la peculiar tipificación que este tipo de democracia ofrece, recorro la emergencia de Uribe como presidente de Colombia y el tipo de liderazgo ejercido durante sus mandatos. Además, analizo el vínculo del líder con las instituciones horizontales de control y rendición de cuentas. El objetivo del artículo es advertir la presencia o ausencia de ciertas dimensiones planteadas en el cuerpo teórico O'Donneleano durante las presidencias de Álvaro Uribe.

DEVELOPMENT OF GEOPOLITICAL SITUATION IN THE BLACK SEA REGION AFTER 1991

This article is devoted to the explanation of the reasons that led to the development of the geopolitical situation in the Black Sea region after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of world communism and the disintegration of the USSR. The author notes that during this period, it did not improve, but on the contrary become more confrontational. The main reason for the intensification of this confrontation is the policy of Russia, which has undergone two main stages in its development: conservative (under President Yeltsin) and revanchist (under Putin’s rule). At the first stage, Russia, trying to maintain its control over the post-Soviet space, adhered to tactics of the secret support of separatist movements. This led to the emergence of Transnistrian, Abkhazian and South Ossetian military-political conflicts, in which Russian military formations were directly involved. The result of these conflicts was the creation of three self-proclaimed state entities in the territory of Moldova and Georgia, which, although not recognized by Russia, were fully controlled by it. On the territory of Ukraine during this period, Russia succeeded only in subjugating its naval base in Sevastopol, including most of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the former USSR. At the second stage, Russia moved from a policy of preserving its presence in the territories of Moldova, Georgia (under the pretext of the need to deploy “peacekeeping forces” there) and Ukraine (due to the creation of a naval base in Sevastopol) to direct military aggressions. It is noted that changes in foreign policy were conditioned by the transformation of the Russian political regime – from a “Delegative Democracy” (under Yeltsin) to Neo-totalitarianism (under Putin).

Narendra Modi’s social media election campaign and India’s delegative democracy

ABSTRACT This paper qualitatively analyzes tweets sent by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and responses to the tweets in the month leading up to his May 2019 electoral win. Several dominant rhetorical themes emerged from the analysis of the data, including Modi as omnipresent and Modi as an advocate for democracy who encourages voters to vote. The dominant theme that emerged from his supporter’s responses was Modi as a leader who supports Hindu nationalism or Hindutva. Both Modi and his supporters presented him as a strong leader who could stand up to Islamic terrorism and one who would invest in national security and India’s army. The author concludes that India’s democracy, under Modi’s leadership, is akin to what Argentinian political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell has termed delegative democracy. Delegative democracy is marked by extreme individualism of the leader, majoritarian politics, and minimal emphasis on democratic institutional building. In both Modi’s and his supporter’s Twitter rhetoric, there was no commitment to inclusive representation within or strengthening of democratic institutions, and while allowing for effective contestation in the form of elections, there was no evidence of respecting India’s traditional constitutional norms, such as secularism and respect for minority rights.

Taking the multiple streams framework for a walk in Latin America

The theoretical development of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has been almost nonexistent in Latin America. Hence, the goal of this article is to examine its portability and provide a road map for researchers wanting to apply the framework to this particular policy context. To this end, various characteristic elements of Latin American politics are analyzed along three broad dimensions—delegative democracies, weak and dependent states, and social inequalities—and then discussed in relation to the core elements of the framework. Although the MSF appears to be capable of capturing the different dynamics at play, there are a number of crucial features that may prove to be a challenge for the framework and could arguably merit its modification for a more efficient application in the region. First, we suggest that its political stream could be modified, as it needs to acknowledge political contexts in which legislatures and political parties are weak, whereas powerful interest groups can exert a very strong influence over executives that dominate policymaking. Furthermore, we discuss if the MSF is able to decode the informal institutions based on corruption, which by now have turned into a constant in most political systems of the region and include illegal efforts by politicians and interest groups to influence how policies are formed.

DELEGATIVE DEMOCRACY: CONCEPTS AND UKRAINIAN REALITIES

This paper is devoted to clarifying the essence of the political regime that emerged in Ukraine as a result of the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections. The author concludes that the current political regime in Ukraine is a classic example of delegative democracy, as it emerged as a result free, competitive and transparent elections, but after the election all state power was concentrated in the hands of the president, with significant violations of generally accepted standards of democratic of governance and norms and procedures of Ukrainian legislation. He emphasizes that the value of the concept of delegative democracy lies in the fact that it illustrates one of the contradictions in the democratic development of many countries that lack democratic traditions – the contradiction between the electoral legitimacy of government and generally accepted standards of democratic governance. Delegative democracies are by its nature the populist regimes, the emergence of which is caused by the belief of citizens in improving their lives under the leadership of a charismatic person. It is noted that delegative regime as a result of growing public dissatisfaction with both its domestic and foreign policies are democracy has three development trends: 1) comparable endurance; 2) the transformation to autocracy; 3) the removal of the president from power as a result of subsequent elections or mass protests. The author believes that all these alternatives can theoretically be inherent in the current regime of delegative democracy in Ukraine, but the endurance is the least likely of them. The transformation of delegative democracy into autocracy or the elimination of the Zelensky regime as a result of growing public dissatisfaction with both its domestic and foreign policies are more likely.

Liquid democracy of the Internet age

The rapid development of information and communication technologies and the permanent task of improving modern democracy have prompted the modern world public to search for ways, forms and mechanisms for attracting Internet technologies to solve problems of improving the modern democratization process. A critical analysis of the shortcomings of classical forms of democracy, namely direct democracy and representative democracy, has accumulated attempts by the creative Internet-community to search for new conceptual solutions of the perennial question of improving the democratic mechanism for the most complete consideration of the proposals, interests and opinions of each citizen when solving socially important problems both at the local and regional levels, as well as at the national level. The article presents a new concept of democracy by B. Ford. As conceived by its author and his followers, this concept is able to accommodate all the positive aspects and overcome all the shortcomings inherent in the classical forms of democracy. An important aspect of the presentation of this concept in the Ukrainian and Russian language discourse was the analysis of the terminological diversity that defines this phenomenon in modern scientific literature — flexible, moving, transparent, fluid, smooth, negotiable, liquid, fleeting, unstable, delegative, cloudy, self-organizing democracy etc., as well as the search for the most informative, given the social context, terminological definition of this concept in the Ukrainian and Russian language sociological scientific environment. The article analyzes the differences between the new form of democracy proposed by B. Ford and previously known delegative democracy. The need for such an analysis was due to fact, that in his early works B. Ford designated liquid democracy precisely as delegative, which entailed a certain scientific and terminological confusion in scientific discourse. The article discusses the features of a new form of democracy that are associated with the possibilities of using modern information and communication technologies and make liquid democracy an attractive element of the democratization process. The article also defines democratization potential of information and communication technologies.

Opciones por la democracia en los ciudadanos nuevoleoneses

Los imaginarios de la democracia admiten variaciones en tipos y modelos. En este trabajo se presenta el análisis de las respuestas a un cuestionario, proporcionadas por una muestra de 1 097 ciudadanos nuevoleoneses sobre distintos aspectos del comportamiento electoral. Se incluyen, entre otras cosas, interpretaciones y evaluaciones de algunos modelos de democracia. Los datos fueron recogidos en una encuesta aleatoria por muestreo domiciliario, llevada a cabo durante las tres primeras semanas de junio de 2018 y patrocinada por la Comisión Estatal Electoral de Nuevo León. Los modelos corresponden a la democracia electoral o representativa, a la democracia participativa, a la democracia asamblearia y a la democracia delegativa. Lamentablemente, las conclusiones no son muy novedosas y ratifican las deficiencias en la construcción de conceptos atingentes entre los electores, en este caso, de la población de Nuevo León, México.

Examining the Determinants of Extra-Judicial Killings in the Philippines at the Subnational Level: the Role of Penal Populism and Vertical Accountability

Since the election of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016, extra-judicial killings (EJKs, hereafter) have become commonplace as a result of his administration’s declaration of war on drugs. Empirical cross-national work on examining determinants behind state repression remains scant especially in understanding the phenomenon at the sub-national level. This study investigates what accounts for variations on EJKs at the level of Philippine provinces. Using monthly panel-data for 62 provinces and employing various count-model regressions, the findings indicate that Philippine provinces which have large populations, stronger state capacity, and are more affluent in terms of the human development index are more likely to exhibit higher rates of EJKs. Furthermore, the vote share of the President in the 2016 elections and presidential visits to specific provinces are correlated with higher incidences of EJKs—corroborating theories on delegative democracies and penal populism. Lastly, it is found that drug-prone provinces are more likely to experience a higher share of human rights violations in terms of EJKs, compared to provinces that have lower affectation rates. The implications suggest that the Philippine war on drugs seem to promote vertical accountability as international criticism and domestic opposition mounts.

La democracia y la ciudadanía latinoamericanas en el pensamiento de O’Donell

El objetivo de la investigación es analizar los aportes, alcances y limitaciones del pensamiento político de O’Donnell, tanto del análisis de las categorías que utilizó para comprender la realidad como en sus aproximaciones a la realidad política de América Latina y el Caribe. Teniendo en cuenta la amplitud de su pensamiento, se aborda la ciudadanía de baja intensidad, democracia delegativa y rendición de cuentas horizontal, destacando su influencia en la teoría y análisis de la realidad política. Se concluye que la democracia delegativa y la rendición de cuentas horizontal se han constituido en orientadoras del debate y práctica de la democracia y su calidad, y la ciudadanía de baja intensidad ha permitido hacer de la ciudadanía-agencia un fundamento central de la democracia a través de la necesaria extensión de derechos a los sectores más vulnerables. Dichas categorías, incluyendo la democracia delegativa, han incentivado el debate de otras, como autoritarismos representativos, poder delegado y rendición de cuentas social. Las limitaciones son: disminución de requisitos democráticos en la democracia delegativa, incrementando el minimalismo democrático; la legitimación de nuevos autoritarismos a través de la democracia delegativa y la no inclusión de la dimensión socioeconómica de la democracia.

Party System Deinstitutionalization: The 1997–98 Colombian Elections in Historical Perspective

Taking the 1997-98 electoral season as its case study, this article seeks to determine whether Colombia’s party system is undergoing deinstitutionalization. The resilience of the Liberal Party and the lack of an organized alternative to the traditional parties may mean that Colombia is in the process of party system transformation.

Presidentialism and Party Politics under Delegative Democracy : Focusing on Democratic Accountability

이 논문의 목적은 제3의 민주화물결을 거친 대통령제 민주주의 국가들에서 나타나는 위임민주주의 현상을 민주적 책임성의 측면에 초점을 맞추어 분석하고 그것이 대통령제와 정당정치 간의 관계에 어떤 영향을 미치는지를 살펴보는 데 있다. 이상의 논의를 요약하면 다음과 같다. 기본적으로 위임민주주의는 절차적 선거를 통해 유권자로부터 권한을 위임받아 선출된 대표가 그에 걸맞은 책임성을 확보하지 못한 곳에서 등장한다는 것이다. 권력분립 하에서, 그것은 행정부에 대해 견제역할을 수행하는 의회와, 국가기관의 감시감독하고 제재를 실행하는 사법기구의 허약성으로 나타난다. 이 점에서 한국은 매우 취약한 상황임을 확인하였다. 이를 극복하기 위해서는 민주적 책임성의 한 축인 수평적 책임성을 강화할 것이 요구된다. 그러나 수평적 책임성이 고립적으로 작동하는 것이 아니라 수직적 책임성의 토대 위에서 작동한다는 점을 고려한다면, 이 양자를 조정 중재하고 매개하는 역할을 수행하는 정당을 강화할 것이 반드시 요구된다. 이를 위해 당내책임성을 확보하기 위한 후보선출과정의 민주화와 정책과 이념에 따른 경쟁을 확보하기 위한 선거제도의 개혁은 필수적이다.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the delegative democracy phenomenon in the presidential democracies under the third wave of democratization focusing on the aspect of democratic accountability and to examine how this affects the relationship between presidentialism and party politics. The analysis results of this paper are as follows. Basically, delegative democracy comes from a place where elected representatives who are authorized by the voters through procedural elections do not have the appropriate responsibilities. Under the separation of powers, it appears to be the fragility of the legislature which acts as a check against the administration, and of the judicial system that oversees and sanctions state institutions. In this regard, we confirmed that Korea is extremely vulnerable. To overcome this, it is required to strengthen horizontal accountability, an axis of democratic accountability. However, considering that horizontal accountability operates on the basis of vertical accountability rather than working in isolation, it is necessary to strengthen political parties that play a role in coordinating and mediating these two. To this end, it is essential to democratize the process of electing candidates to ensure accountability within the party and reform the electoral system to secure competition based on policy and ideology.

The Philippine presidency in Southeast Asian perspective: imperiled and imperious presidents but not perilous presidentialism

ABSTRACTAmong the neglected cases of presidential systems in Southeast Asia, the Philippines is particularly interesting as the oldest in the region and as a ‘pure’ case of presidentialism which provides seemingly strong evidence for its ‘perilousness’. ‘First wave’ presidentialism theory appears to explain how competing legitimacy claims between a president and the legislature contributed to the downfall of a sitting president (Joseph E. Estrada in 2001). Yet, Philippine presidents have usually dominated other branches of government. O’Donnell's concept of ‘delegative democracy’ helps elucidate the hegemonic position of Philippine presidents generally and sheds light on the illiberally transgressive nature of the Marcos and Duterte presidencies in particular. When these twin perils of imperiled and imperious presidents are examined regionally, however, striking parallels are apparent in parliamentary Thailand while the Indonesian case provides a contrasting example of a relatively stable presidential system.

WHAT IS «DEFECTIVE DEMOCRACIES» AND WHAT THEY ARE

This article analyzes the concept of defective democracy by German political scientist Wolfgang Merkel. Its development was caused by the need for a clearer distinction of new imperfect democracies, on the one hand, from the liberal constitutional democracies, and on the other hand, from autocracies, that mask their identity by democratic facade. The author pays attention to some incorrect interpretations of this concept, namely: the inter- pretation of defective democracies as the only transitive mode; the treatment of them as a specific kind of authoritarian regimes; the spread of this concept to all forms of hybrid regimes.The author analyzes in the detail the essence of this concept, relying on the works of the founders (Wolfgang Merkel, Hans-Jurgen Puhle, Aurel Croissant, and Peter Thiery) He emphasizes that the defects of democratic governance are of constitutional and legal nature and they are detected by comparing the imperfect democracies to established lib- eral democracies that within this concept are defined as «embedded». Democracy defects are deviations from the standards of democratic governance, copied from the current po- litical system of liberal constitutional democracies. The political regimes with such defects are identified as defective democracies. The article examines the subtypes of defective democracies, namely:Exclusive democracy that excludes some groups and/or individuals from the demo- cratic electoral system;Enclave democracy under which certain segments of democratic governance are con- trolled by private forces;Illiberal democracy, within which there are some violations of group rights and indi- vidual freedoms in favor of the social majority;Delegative democracy which violates the system of checks and balances and the ex- ecutive takes precedence over legislative and judicial.However, the regimes with such deficiencies remain democracies, if the significant defects are only part of regime, but not penetrating it through, denying the very meaning of democratic governance. Simultaneously, democratic defects in one partial regime to some extent are reflected also on the other, impairing the democratic functioning of the entire political regime.Finally, the author concludes that this concept is of great theoretical value for the reform of the modern Ukrainian political system. He stresses that a thorough analysis of the Ukrainian political system’s shortcomings in the context of a defective democracy concept is one of important tasks for the national political science.