Representative Democracy Research Articles

Reconstruction of the Threshold Setting for Regional Head Candidacy in the Perspective of Electoral Democracy in Indonesia

This study explores the reconstruction of threshold regulations for regional head candidacy within the framework of Indonesia’s democratic electoral system. The threshold regulation, requiring political parties or coalitions to meet specific parliamentary support levels for candidate nomination, has been a critical yet controversial component of Indonesia’s Pilkada process. While initially designed to ensure political stability and legitimacy, this policy has faced criticism for marginalizing independent candidates and smaller parties, undermining the principles of inclusivity and proportional representation. Grounded in the Constitutional Court Decision No. 60/PUU-XXII/2024, this research analyzes the implications of threshold policies and their alignment with democratic principles such as justice, equality, and broad-based participation. The decision emphasizes reducing the threshold percentage and simplifying the requirements for independent candidates, aiming to enhance electoral inclusivity and prevent political monopolies by dominant parties. The study highlights the importance of a nuanced policy design that accommodates regional sociopolitical diversity, promoting equitable competition while safeguarding electoral justice. Additionally, it proposes strategies to encourage coalition-building among smaller political parties and amplify opportunities for independent candidates, thereby enriching democratic representation. This reconstruction is anticipated to address long-standing criticisms of the threshold system, fostering a more inclusive and transparent electoral process. By aligning with democratic ideals, these reforms aspire to improve the quality of governance and enhance citizens’ trust in the democratic process at the regional level. The findings contribute to broader discussions on policy reform in electoral systems to balance stability, fairness, and inclusivity.

A little less concentration, a little more actors, please? Exploring the relationship between populist attitudes and perceptions of concentration of political power practices

ABSTRACT Demand-side studies of populism, adapting a citizen perspective, have grown exponentially during the last decade as a result of a growing political and academic concern over the potential effects of populism on the political system. Nevertheless, how populist attitudes at the citizen level are related to actual proposals for system-change is a surprisingly neglected research topic. One such proposal concerns the future of multiple-mandate-holding (MMH), i.e. the simultaneous exercise of at least two directly elected political functions, a controversial practice in many parts of Europe. By utilizing cross-sectional panel data gathered in Finland in 2022–2023, a country characterized by extensive MMH among Members of Parliament, this study seeks to explore whether and how populist attitudes are related to the idea of representational pluralism in the political system, defined as the level of diversity among directly elected political representatives active within the political system. Using statistical analyses, we confirm our hypothesis that stronger populist attitudes are clearly associated with weaker support for MMH in general and stronger support for limiting the scope of MMH specifically. Our findings contribute to the theory-building of demand-side populism by showing that populist attitudes are also associated with the idea of representational pluralism.

Perspectives of respondents in Anyigba town on the impediments to the underrepresentation of Kogi State women in elective positions following Nigeria’s 2023 democratic elections

ABSTRACT Studies on women’s political marginalisation in Nigeria dominate the academic literature. However, limited research has interrogated the impediments to the underrepresentation of Kogi State women in elective positions following Nigeria’s 2023 elections. This study examined the role of socioeconomic factors, the nature of politics and perceived patriarchal considerations in the poor representation of Kogi State women in government. This study adopted the liberal feminist theory, used a descriptive survey, and the sample consisted of 361 respondents in Anyigba with deep and diverse knowledge and experience of gender politics in Kogi State. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire, and analyses involved descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and t-test. Study results from the 326 completed questionnaires showed that the majority of the respondents implicated socioeconomic issues (19.052), the nature of politics (17.221) and societal patriarchal attitudes (19.051) in the underrepresentation of Kogi State women in government after the elections. The empirical evidence in this study highlighted the obstacles to women’s political representation. This study concluded that improving women’s employment and educational opportunities and strong political commitment from the leadership towards implementing political quotas for women and internal democracy is crucial to increasing the representation of Kogi State women in government

Democracy by the “Other”: How Ethiopian Diaspora Communities in Virginia Engage in Political Participation

In November 2021, Glen Youngkin, a Republican candidate, won the election for governor of Virginia. For many Virginians, his win was a surprise, especially since President Donald Trump had endorsed him. For Ethiopian communities, the election results were the outcome of months of lobbying and organizing due to their dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party leadership. This development highlights the direct consequences of US foreign policy on its domestic political environment, especially regarding issues ethnic communities care about and how they can influence democratic processes. In this line, this study investigates the relationships between host and homeland political rhetoric and the importance of understanding the political power of diaspora-based conflict communities. Using narrative inquiry, I analyzed the reasons behind the 2020 voting trends among Ethiopian communities in Virginia. For Ethiopian Americans, the ongoing war in the Tigray region, as well as the mainstream media and US government's framing of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, demonstrates an unwillingness to engage with Ethiopian scholars and practitioners as well as a lack of historical and political understanding coming from the US government. In this polarized time, Americans cannot ignore the direct impact of foreign policy on domestic institutions and how immigrants contribute, through voting, to the election of public servants, including presidents and states representatives.

Tan Malaka and Anti-Colonial Messaging during the Indonesian National Revolution

In the throes of the Indonesian National Revolution Dutch intelligence services were not backward in their attempts to decode anti-colonial messaging. The writings of national-communist Tan Malaka received special attention, alongside a range of ad hoc guerrilla organisations, many only loosely affiliated with the Republican regime. To this end, they assiduously collected pamphlets, graffiti, and documents and anything that could throw light on their adversaries. These materials survive in the Dutch archives. This article gives particular prominence to one of Tan Malaka’s little-studied prison writings, Gerpolek, his self-described handbook for political and military struggle, which is couched in highly populist language. The balance of the article discusses a range of guerrilla posters falling into Dutch hands, some mimicking the Tan Malakaist line and others of Islamic inspiration. As this article reveals, by lampooning the Japanese, Dutch, and British, these were powerful statements of a counter-narrative fast in the making, and with defence of independence and speedy defeat of the attacking Dutch forces the bottom line. While some of the material is also suggestive of “social revolution,” as the article concludes, it is a latent theme and largely outside of Marxist rhetoric.

Perception Electoral Integrity Index (PEI) Local Elections, May 14, 2023

Referring to the PEI2023 value = 53.33 points, the Local government elections that took place in Albania on May 14, 2023, are evaluated as a process, which in its entirety was classified at the "Moderate" level. Compared to the parliamentary elections of 2021, the value of the Index has decreased by about 4.4 points. Factors related to the financing of the election campaign (32.3 points against 40.3 points), legislation (45.6 points against 54.5 points), registration of electoral subjects (48.8 points versus 59.8 points) are perceived as factors with the greatest negative effects on the integrity of elections. Albania continues to be classified in the group of countries where the challenge of organizing and conducting democratic elections that must meet international standards and OSCE commitments is present. Received: 15 August 2024 / Accepted: 30 October 2024 / Published: 3 December 2024

Deepening the degrowth planning debate: division of labor, complexity, and the roles of markets and digital tools

Many definitions of degrowth highlight that the corresponding great and deep transformations are going to be “designed,” “planned,” and “democratic.” However, critical issues of democratic planning have only recently begun to be discussed. Considering a range of aspects of the technical and social division of labor, the article first revisits some of the main issues of market vis-à-vis planned resource allocation in capitalist and socialist economic growth contexts. It then zooms in on goals, characteristics, and likely issues of division of labor and resource allocation in planned degrowth circumstances. I argue that degrowth societies could use three measures to reduce the complexity of the division of labor that undermined socialist planning attempts. First, degrowth societies could immediately phase out the “excess sector” of production. Second, they could develop, under consideration of their institutional national traditions, pragmatic mixes of ex ante planning (assisted by digital solutions) of the “essential” economic sector and ex post or market regulation of the “in-between” sector. Finally, a parsimonious use of digital tools is likely to be helpful in connecting different scales of governance and associated planning activities (local, national, regional, global). To democratically legitimize planning goals and processes without overburdening people, pathways may be sought that emphasize value over formal rationality, or general planning principles and strategies over concrete targets and tasks. Democratic legitimacy could further increase through a complementation of representative democracy through deliberative instruments such as citizen forums or assemblies as well as applications of the subsidiarity principle.

Creating a Nation through an Anthology of Neo-Latin Poetry

Abstract Farragines poematum, an extensive, four-volume anthology of Neo-Latin poems, was published in 1561–1562 by a group of former Wittenberg students based in Prague. This study focuses on how this collective literary project originated, how the anthology was prepared and what reasons poets might have had for publishing a representative selection of their own works of poetry and their friends’. It demonstrates how the final form of the anthology was influenced by the strategies of gaining patronage. Following the concepts of Caspar Hirschi, this study discusses which role anthology, as a specific literary type, could have played in the early stages of the Humanist ‘competition for national honour’, how it presents the community of poets in the Bohemian lands and the spread of education from Italy to the Transalpine regions to prove the quality of local scholars.

Legal Study of the Role of the Honorary Board of Election Administrators in Realizing Democratic Elections

The primary goal of this research is to evaluate the role of the Honorary Council for the Implementation of Elections in prosecuting election organizers who break the code of ethics, as well as to understand how the DKPP imposes sanctions on election organizer members who breach the code of ethics. This study employed normative legal research. The author's study reveals that where Article 1 paragraph (24) indicates, "The Election Organizer Honor Council, hereinafter abbreviated as DKPP, is an entity in charge of dealing with infractions of the Election Organizer's code of ethics. The provisions that mention the sanctions for violations of the election organizer's code of ethics are regulated in DKPP Regulation No. 1 of 2021 concerning the Second Amendment to the regulation of the Election Organizer Honorary Council No. 3 of 2017 concerning Procedural Guidelines for the Code of Ethics for General Election Organizers Article 31 paragraph 4 indicates that if the DKPP's finalization judges that the Respondent and/or Reported Party breached, the DKPP imposes sanctions in the form of a written warning, temporary dismissal, or permanent dismissal. Thus, it is determined that the implementation of the code of ethics in Indonesia, particularly in the election management body, DKPP, must prevent violations of the code of ethics committed by election organizers in order to ensure democratic elections.

Reimagining Democracy

In this brief Conversations essay, I trace how immigrant suffrage in the United States deteriorated in the 19th century and argue that the US should move toward creating a pathway for noncitizen voting for two reasons—a more representative democracy and for a smoother assimilation process into American culture. Noncitizens contribute economically and socially to their communities, and they often have the same investment in their community’s welfare as citizens. Expanding voting rights to noncitizens, even if only at the local-level, would give them a voice in decisions that affect their everyday lives.

Roots of Lebanon’s Sectarian Politics

This paper contends that the French Mandate significantly contributed to the institutionalisation of sectarianism in post-colonial Lebanese politics, and it investigates the Mandate’s enduring impacts on confessional governance. Building on existing research on the legacies of the Mandate and the development of sectarianism in Lebanon, the paper explores the Mandate’s roots of Lebanon’s sectarian politics. The analysis examines religious biases by the colonial administration and the National Pact of 1943. By doing so, this paper argues that the political representation in Lebanon can be traced back to sectarian connotations through religious quotas in the parliamentary system, patronage networks, and the fragmentation of Lebanese identity. This phenomenon is known as sectarianisation—a term that is used when political representatives exploit sectarian grudges within the population to acquire power. While other factors play a role in the development of sectarianisation, this paper argues that the French Mandate functions as the primary catalyst in the institutionalisation of sectarianism in Lebanon. Consequently, the central research question this paper seeks to answer is: What are the legacies of the French Mandate on the sectarianisation of post-colonial Lebanese politics?

The fourth industrial revolution: Implications for the global economy and for the strategic competition between the United States and China

During the First Industrial Revolution, industrialization led to incompatibilities between the economic sphere and a political sphere based on rule by monarchs and land-owning nobles. These incompatibilities led to poor economic outcomes for workers and, ultimately, to deep changes in the political system. In the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions, compatibility emerged between new technologies and political systems based on representative democracy, leading to favorable outcomes. The changes in technology brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution may lead to a growing incompatibility between the productive and political spheres, marked by polarization and conflict both within and among counties. A key aspect of this conflict is the rivalry between the United States and China. We evaluate the strengths of the respective countries and analyze which of them is likely to win the competition for dominance during the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

“Can the participation of civil society in policy networks mitigate against societal challenges in rural areas?”

Rural areas increasingly face a raft of societal economic, social and place-based challenges, which civil society potentially has a role to play in mitigating. However, there are gaps in extant knowledge as to whether policy networks are present in rural areas and if they are, what, if any, role civil society plays in these in seeking to mitigate societal challenges in rural areas. Initially, we show how the societal challenges of rural areas may be addressed through policy networks. Policy network theory guides our analysis in eight rural areas in Denmark. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with 38 local stakeholders from in- and outside civil society. Based on the literature reviewed, we establish four dimensions that are important for the success of policy networks in mitigating societal challenges. In our analysis, we focus on these four dimensions in assessing the presence and role of policy networks in rural areas. The four dimensions describe the extent to which 1) collaboration occurs amongst a wide selection of representatives from civil society, other local stakeholders and local government, 2) steering from local government is characterized by ‘strategic signposting’ and trust, 3) local stakeholders are invited early into decision-making processes and influence them and 4) a mutual resource dependency is observed. We conclude by discussing to what extent the type of policy network found is able to mitigate the pressing societal challenges of rural areas and, finally, we make recommendations for how to support civil society in contributing to the mitigation of these societal challenges at three levels (local government, associations and citizens).

A Dilemma for Proceduralist Theories of Democracy: Elected Delegates or Elected Monarchs?

Abstract Emphasizing the intrinsic value of formal political equality, a prominent strand of democratic theory—proceduralism—sharply disassociates democracy from substantive justice. This paper elucidates a resultant dilemma: that proceduralism is either underinclusive in its exclusion of robust forms of representative democracy or overinclusive in its inclusion of elective dictatorship. I show how the horns of this dilemma respectively derive from different conceptions of political equality: the standard view, which foregrounds the choice of legislative text itself, and an alternative view, drawn from Robert Dahl’s model of “procedural democracy,” which privileges the choice of procedure by which to resolve disagreement over the choice of text. Conceiving of democracy in terms of political equality alone leads to a rigid characterization of the elected legislature either as an institution whose structure is entirely open or as a mechanism for enacting citizens’ wishes that denies legislators their intuitive input.

Towards a More Democratic Forum: Source Analysis of News Reporting on Older People's Problems in Delo during the Slovenian Parliamentary Elections from 2004 to 2018

While an increasing number of studies provide important insights into media construction of old age, the structure of news sources is seldom examined. The latter is especially important in democratic societies, during election years, when people elect representatives who tackle older people's social problems. Using content analysis, we examined the source structure of news articles reporting on older people's problems in the Slovenian newspaper Delo in five sequential parliamentary election years from 2004 to 2018. The findings showed that news coverage was predominantly constructed by elite sources rarely including representatives of older people. This characteristic strengthens the surveillance function of Delo but undermines its role as a democratic forum. However, during the last three observed election years, Delo's news reporting showed signs of transitioning towards a more democratic forum, which holds potential for fostering older people's civic inclusion.

Mauro Dorato: Science and Representative Democracy: Experts and Citizens

Mauro Dorato: Science and Representative Democracy: Experts and Citizens

Accepting a party’s decision to (not) participate in a coalition government. Does the inclusiveness of the decision-makers make a difference?

ABSTRACT The decision whether or not to participate in a coalition government is crucial for parties operating in parliamentary democracies using a list-PR system. For party members, agreeing (winning) or disagreeing (losing) with this decision can potentially have a considerable impact on their attitudes and potential behavior including party and membership satisfaction, support for the decision-making process, decision acceptance, activity within the party, leaving the party and no longer voting for the party. It has extensively been documented that losers of elections and referendums become less supportive of the political system, but the question is whether such a winner-loser gap also occurs when party members win or lose on a difficult party decision. In addition, according to the procedural fairness theory, including party members in the decision-making process might ease the pain of losing. However, the exact impact of the openness of decision-makers (inclusive or exclusive) on the effect of winning and losing on members’ attitudes and potential behavior remains unclear. Based on a survey experiment among party members of two parties in Flanders (Belgium), we find consistently significant differences in members’ attitudes and potential behavior after winning or losing the decision of government participation. Remarkably, there is only limited moderating influence of the kind of decision-makers on the effect of winning or losing.

The (Other) Boundary Problem: Conceptualizing Membership of the Demos’ Two Bodies

AbstractThis paper intersects the literature on the democratic boundary problem with the literature on the constructivist turn in political representation to show that the boundary problem broadly construed involves a distinction between ‘the problem of inclusion’ (into pre-existing demoi and their decision-making procedures) and ‘the problem of constituting the demos’ (which involves criteria for partaking in constituent power). This distinction is consistently neglected by democratic theorists. However, it has serious implications for representative democracies because the standard answers to the boundary problem – the all-affected-interests principle, the all-subjected principle, and the substantive-demos principle – do not apply to the problem of constituting the demos. A new principle aimed at the latter problem is here proposed: the constructivist-representative principle. In the end, it should be clear that ascertaining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision requires the adoption of different principles depending on the specific demos in question and on the type of decision-making procedure involved (e.g., constitution-making-or-changing, lawmaking, policymaking, etc.).

Elections, War, and Gender: Self-Selection and the Pursuit of Victory

Abstract Why might female leaders of democratic countries commit more money, equipment, soldiers, and other resources to interstate conflicts than male leaders? We argue that gender bias in the process of democratic election helps explain this behavior. Since running for office is generally more costly for women than for men, only women who place a higher value on winning competitions will choose to run. After election, they also devote more resources to pursuing victory in conflict situations. To provide microfoundational evidence for this claim, we analyze data from an online laboratory game featuring real-time group play in which participants chose to run for election, conducted a simple campaign, and represented their group in a contest game if elected. Women with a higher nonmonetary value to winning were more likely to self-select into candidacy, and when victorious, they spent more resources on intergroup contests than male elected leaders. The data suggest that electoral selection plays an important role in observed differences between male and female leaders in the real world.

Efektivitas Sistem Threshold dalam Presidential Threshold di Indonesia

The Presidential Threshold is a rule that sets the minimum threshold percentage of votes that a political party is required to achieve, in order to nominate or carry presidential and vice presidential candidates in the election contestation. This system is designed to filter out candidates who are considered qualified, the hope is that only candidates with high electability levels can run. However, its implementation is often a source of controversy because it is considered to hamper potential candidates from small parties or independents who may have quality, but are less known to the public. As a result, the dominance of major parties in the presidential candidacy limits people's choices and does not reflect the existing political diversity. In the Indonesian system of government, where the president and the DPR are independent institutions, the Presidential threshold system is considered incompatible with the principles of inclusive and representative democracy. This provision was first implemented through Article 5 paragraph (5) of Law Number 23 Year 2003 on the General Election of the President and Vice President, and has continued to be used in subsequent presidential elections. This article focuses on the effectiveness of the Presidential Threshold in the Indonesian political context and its impact on political participation, democratic representation, and constitutional law.