Critical Review of Gerring and Thacker’s Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance

Critical Review of Gerring and Thacker’s Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance PDF

Author: Alberto De Luigi

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2015-05-19

Total Pages: 1

ISBN-13: 1512278750

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In this essay it is proposed a critical analysis of Gerring and Thacker’s Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (2008). There is a fundamental ambiguity concerning the association between the name of the theory – “Centripetalism”, according to the authors a mix of authority and inclusion – and its substantial and practical contents. It will be debated Gerring and Thacker’s claim to have conceived a “refinement of Lijphart’s consensus model”; in fact the centripetal theory is actually incompatible with Lijphart’s power sharing model and, in many respects, the opposite. It will also be presented a critic of Gerring and Thacker’s methodology for what concerns causal mechanisms and aggregation of variables at the basis of the empirical verification of the theory, showing why their centripetal theory of democratic governance can be considered too far-reaching (but even too less characterized by its own peculiar traits) to have a real explanatory power.

Handbook on Local and Regional Governance

Handbook on Local and Regional Governance PDF

Author: Filipe Teles

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2023-01-13

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 1800371209

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Holistic in approach, this Handbook’s international range of leading scholars present complementary perspectives, both theoretical and empirically pertinent, to explore recent developments in the field of local and regional governance.

Strong Constitutions

Strong Constitutions PDF

Author: Maxwell A. Cameron

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-03

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0190235225

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The separation of powers is an idea with ancient origins, but nowadays it is largely relegated to legal doctrine, public philosophy, or the history of ideas. Yet the concept is often evoked in debates on the 'war' on terrorism, the use of emergency powers, or constitutional reform. Strong Constitutions boldly places the separation of powers on a social scientific footing, arguing that it emerged with the spread of literacy, became central to constitutional thought after the Gutenberg revolution, and faces unprecedented challenges in our current era of electronic communication. Constitutional states use texts to coordinate collective action, and they do so by creating governmental agencies with specific jurisdiction and competence over distinct types of power. Among them are the power to make decisions backed by legally sanctioned coercion; the deliberative power to make procedurally legitimate laws; and the judicial power to interpret and apply laws in particular circumstances. The division of government into three such branches enables state officials and citizens to use written texts-legal codes and documents, including constitutions-along with unwritten rules and conventions to coordinate their activities on larger scales and over longer time horizons. Cameron argues that constitutional states are not weaker because their powers are separated. They are generally stronger because they solve collective action problems rooted in speech and communication. The book is a must read for anyone interested in the separation of powers, its origin, evolution, and consequences.

A Spring Aborted

A Spring Aborted PDF

Author: Yusuf M. Sidani

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2019-10-09

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 178756665X

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The Arab Spring uprisings were not about gender; these were uprisings demanding rights for all. Yet, they presented a rare opportunity for women to let themselves be heard. And, from being some of the most memorable and lasting leaders of these revolutionary protests, female activists were particularly targeted by many regimes.

Populism and Patronage

Populism and Patronage PDF

Author: Paul D. Kenny

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0198807872

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Populist rule is bad for democracy, yet in country after country, populists are being voted into office. Populism and Patronage shows that the populists such as Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi win elections when the institutionalized ties between non-populist parties and voters decay. Yet, the explanations for this decay differ across different types of party system. Populism and Patronage focuses on the particular vulnerability of patronage-based party systems to populism. Patronage-based systems are ones in which parties depend on the distribution of patronage through a network of brokers to mobilize voters. Drawing on principal agent theory and social network theory, this book argues that an increase in broker autonomy weakens the ties between patronage parties and voters, making latter available for direct mobilization by populists. Decentralization is thus a major factor behind populist success in patronage democracies. The volume argues that populists exploit the breakdown in national patronage networks by connecting directly with the people through the media and mass rallies, avoiding or minimizing the use of deeply-institutionalized party structures.This book not only reinterprets the recurrent appeal of populism in India, but also offers a more general theory of populist electoral support that is tested using qualitative and quantitative data on cases from across Asia and around the world, including Indonesia, Japan, Venezuela, and Peru.

The Consolidation of Democracy

The Consolidation of Democracy PDF

Author: Carsten Q. Schneider

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-11-19

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1134033567

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This book investigates the successes and failures in consolidating those democratic regimes that emerged in Europe and Latin America in the last quarter of the 20th century. The theoretical approach developed combines the most prominent political-institutional and socio-structural approaches to explaining the Consolidation of Democracy (CoD). Reinterpreting conventional claims, Schneider’s comparative analyses of 32 countries indicates that the driving force behind CoD is the fit between the institutional type of democracy and the societal context in terms of power dispersion. This book: presents new data measuring dimensions of regime transition processes in Latin America, the Middle East and Northern Africa, as well as some former Soviet republics; reassesses some core assumptions of the dominant transition paradigm; discusses general methodological issues involved when investigating causally complex claims in comparative social research and presents fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) as a valuable addition to the methodological tool kit of comparative social scientists. This innovative and important volume will be of interest to political scientists, particularly those with an interest in democracy, democratization, comparative politics and comparative methodology.

Rescuing Democracy

Rescuing Democracy PDF

Author: Paul E. Smith

Publisher: punctum books

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 0998237507

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This book proposes a new institution - the 'People's Forum' - to enable democratic governments to effectively address long-running issues like global warming and inequality. It would help citizens decide what strategic problems their government must fix, especially where this requires them to suffer some inconvenience or cost.The People's Forum is first based on a new diagnosis of government failure in democracies. The book tests its own analyses of government failure by seeing whether these might help us to explain the failures of particular democracies to address (and in some cases, to even recognize) several crucial environmental problems. The essential features of a new design for democracy are described and then compared with those of previous institutional designs that were also intended to improve the quality of democratic government. In that comparison, the People's Forum turns out to be not only the most effective design for developing and implementing competent policy, but also the easiest to establish and run. The latter advantage is crucial as there has been no success in getting previous designs into actual trial practice. It is hoped that this book may inspire a small group to raise the money to set up and run the People's Forum. Then, as citizens see it operating and engage with it, they may come to regard the new Forum as essential in helping them to deliberate long-running issues and to get their resulting initiatives implemented by government. Smith also discusses how the People's Forum must be managed and how groups with different political ideologies may react to it.An Afterword sets out the method by which this design was produced, to help those who might want to devise an institution themselves. The new concepts in environmental science that the book develops to test its diagnosis are applied in an Appendix to outline crucial options for the future of Tasmania. Similar options apply to many countries, states and provinces. As indicated above, those choices are currently beyond the capacity of democratic governments to address and in some cases, even to recognize. But the People's Forum may lift them out of that morass.

Population and Politics

Population and Politics PDF

Author: John Gerring

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-05-28

Total Pages: 511

ISBN-13: 1108645321

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Every country, every subnational government, and every district has a designated population, and this has a bearing on politics in ways most citizens and policymakers are barely aware of. Population and Politics provides a comprehensive evaluation of the political implications stemming from the size of a political unit – on social cohesion, the number of representatives, overall representativeness, particularism ('pork'), citizen engagement and participation, political trust, electoral contestation, leadership succession, professionalism in government, power concentration in the central apparatus of the state, government intervention, civil conflict, and overall political power. A multimethod approach combines field research in small states and islands with cross-country and within-country data analysis. Population and Politics will be of interest to academics, policymakers, and anyone concerned with decentralization and multilevel governance.

Politics of Democratic Breakdown

Politics of Democratic Breakdown PDF

Author: Gangsheng Bao

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-05-30

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1000586189

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Democratic breakdown as a political and historic event can impact the fate of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people, by changing the political complexion of a country. This book attempts to systematically explain why democracies collapse. The author's main theoretical argument is based on the examination of two factors. One is political cleavages among voters. These can cause serious political conflicts and may lead to fierce political confrontation and major upheaval at the society level. The other revolves around the types of political and institutional arrangements under democratic regimes. Centrifugal democratic regimes are likely to weaken government capacity or state capacity, rendering governments incapable of effectively resolving political conflicts and, when these two factors come together, political conflicts are less likely to be controlled effectively. These situations can evolve into serious political crises and eventually lead to the collapse of democratic regimes. The empirical research of this book is based on a comparative historical analysis of Germany, Nigeria, Chile, and India. Examining democratic collapses from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, this book will be of interest to those engaged in the study of democracy, Political Science, Comparative Politics, and Political Theory.