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This article analyses salient trade-offs in the design of democracy. It grounds this analysis in a distinction between two basic models of democracy: simple and complex majoritarianism. These models differ not only in their electoral and party systems, but also in the style of coalition-building. Simple majoritarianism concentrates executive power in a single majority party; complex majoritarianism envisions the formation of shifting, issue-specific coalitions among multiple parties whose programs differ across multiple conflict dimensions. The latter pattern of coalition formation is very difficult to create and sustain under pure parliamentary government. A separation of powers between executive and legislature can facilitate such a pattern, while also achieving central goals of simple majoritarianism: identifiable cabinet alternatives before the election and stable cabinets afterward. The separation of powers can thus balance simple and complex majoritarianism in ways that are unavailable under parliamentarism. The article also compares the presidential and semi-parliamentary versions of the separation of powers. It argues that the latter has important advantages, e.g., when it comes to resolving inter-branch deadlock, as it avoids the concentration of executive power in a single human being.
An egalitarian approach to the fair representation of voters specifies three main institutional requirements: proportional representation, legislative majority rule and a parliamentary system of government. This approach faces two challenges: the under-determination of the resulting democratic process and the idea of a trade-off between equal voter representation and government accountability. Linking conceptual with comparative analysis, the article argues that we can distinguish three ideal-typical varieties of the egalitarian vision of democracy, based on the stages at which majorities are formed. These varieties do not put different relative normative weight onto equality and accountability, but have different conceptions of both values and their reconciliation. The view that accountability is necessarily linked to ‘clarity of responsibility’, widespread in the comparative literature, is questioned – as is the idea of a general trade-off between representation and accountability. Depending on the vision of democracy, the two values need not be in conflict.
The article critically reviews the conceptual ideas of G. Bingham Powell's Elections as Instruments of Democracy and explores ways to develop them further. Powell's conceptual alternative to the Westminster model - the 'proportional' vision of democracy - comes in two variants, one focusing on proportional representation ( PR) and the other on proportional legislative influence. If one focuses on the former, it is possible to distinguish four visions of parliamentary democracy based on the main stage at which majorities are formed. The four stages are: party, alliance, cabinet, and law formation. The corresponding normative visions can be placed on a conceptual continuum between 'simple' and 'complex' majoritarianism. This article discusses the goals and trade-offs associated with them as well as their underlying institutional designs. It also re-emphasises Powell's insight that the congruence between policy makers and the median voter in a unidimensional policy space is a more appropriate normative standard for some visions of democracy than for others.
This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform.
The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system – a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government – which we call ‘semi-parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two-dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015.
The article responds to four commentaries on the concept of semi-parliamentary government and its application to Australian bicameralism. It highlights four main points: (1) Our preferred typology is not more ‘normative’ than existing approaches, but applies the criterion of ‘direct election’ equally to executive and legislature; (2) While the evolution of semi-parliamentary government had contingent elements, it plausibly also reflects the ‘equilibrium’ nature of certain institutional configurations; (3) The idea that a pure parliamentary system with pure proportional representation has absolute normative priority over ‘instrumentalist’ concerns about cabinet stability, identifiability and responsibility is questionable; and (4) The reforms we discuss may be unlikely to occur in Australia, but deserve consideration by scholars and institutional reformers in other democratic systems.
Differente Bewegungen : ein Gespräch über politische Aspekte von Transgender und anderen Bewegungen
(2002)
Obwohl Latein eine nicht mehr gesprochene Sprache ist und ihr deswegen kein kommunikativer Nutzen zukommt, ist die Anzahl der Latein als Schulfach wählenden Schüler im Zeitverlauf angestiegen. Mehrere Studien haben zudem gezeigt, dass Lateinkenntnisse weder das logische Denken, noch den Erwerb anderer Sprachen, noch das Gespür für die grammatikalische Struktur der Muttersprache verbessern. Auch wenn sich empirisch keine Vorteile des Erwerbs alter Sprachen nachweisen lassen, können Menschen subjektiv an solche Vorteile glauben und ihr Verhalten an ihrer Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit ausrichten. Auf der Basis einer unter Eltern von Gymnasialschülern durchgeführten Befragung zeigen wir, dass Latein umfassende Transfereffekte zugeschrieben und Personen mit Lateinkenntnissen positiver bewertet werden als Personen mit Kenntnissen moderner Sprachen. Weiterhin zeigt sich, dass die „Illusio“ der Vorteile von Latein zwar in allen Bildungsgruppen wirksam ist, doch besonders von den Hochgebildeten vertreten wird. Sie arbeiten damit an der Konstruktion einer Realität, von der sie selbst die größten Nutznießer sind, indem sie Latein als symbolisches Kapital verwenden.
Organisationsstrukturen und ihr Einfluss auf die Karriereentwicklung von Wissenschaftlerinnen
(2011)
Freizeitangebote
(2007)