Informing and engaging citizens
Just how much do voters trust Scottish parties’ social media posts?
Do people believe the ‘facts’ circulated on social media by political parties? Graeme Baxter, Rita Marcella and Agnieszka Walicka showed Scottish voters five posts from different parties and asked them to rate their reliability. The Scottish Greens’ post was viewed as the most trustworthy, with participants identifying a wide gap between their experience of local politicians and the national debate. […]
Book review | Democracy Protests: Origins, Features and Significance, by Dawn Brancati
In Democracy Protests: Origins, Features and Significance, Dawn Brancati examines the conditions under which citizen discontent with governments transforms into democracy protests, placing particular emphasis upon the role played by economic crises. Drawing upon an original dataset based on 180 states between 1989 and 2011, this is a significant contribution to better understanding the factors and dynamics behind […]
New parties, new movements: but how much say do party members get?
The Political Party Database Project has analysed the workings of 122 political parties in 19 parliamentary democracies. Remarkably, the vast majority share a common model of subscriber democracy: members join at a local level and enjoy a certain amount of say in the party’s direction. But in recent years a wave of new political movements, […]
Book review | Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation, by Gianpaolo Baiocchi & Ernesto Ganuza
In Popular Democracy: The Paradox of Participation, Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza examine contemporary forms of participatory governance by tracing the origins and development of participatory budgeting (PB) from its roots in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to its adoption in two cases, Cordoba, Spain and Chicago, USA. While acknowledging that PB has been seen as being too easily co-opted by neoliberalism, the […]
There are at least 2,234 expressions of ‘democracy’ – and the less common versions can teach us a lot
Over the course of recorded history, the concept of ‘democracy’ has been associated with many different ‘partner’ words, each of which ‘re-versions’ the core concept in a different way. Jean-Paul Gagnon has compiled a database that already includes hundreds of these expressions, some obvious and much-used, but others very specific or little known. What can […]
Is citizen participation actually good for democracy?
The more people who participate in a democracy, the more democratic it becomes – or so de Tocqueville believed. But sceptics have challenged that assumption on the basis that not everyone has the skills to make informed political decisions. In his new book, Russell J Dalton (University of California, Irvine) argues that the problem lies with […]
How evangelical religion contributed to peace in Northern Ireland
ECONI – an evangelical Protestant organisation – played a key role in establishing peace in Northern Ireland. Gladys Ganiel explains how its effectiveness rests in part on its credibility: ECONI’s evangelical identity provided it with a legitimacy that some ecumenical peace-building organisations lacked. Similar PostsThe DUP’s extremist links make it unfit to join a Conservative […]
How the EU elite publicises its high-profile work and stays silent about the rest
The EU policy process is often criticised for being distant from its citizens. Part of this criticism is rooted in a lack of media coverage of EU legislative decision-making, says Iskander De Bruycker. Drawing on a recent study, he illustrates that the extent to which politicians in Brussels address citizens’ interests in the media over a […]
Book review | Radicals: Outsiders Changing the World, by Jamie Bartlett
In Radicals: Outsiders Changing the World, Jamie Bartlett probes into the worldviews and lives of individuals, groups and movements who are seeking to change the way we live now and examines their ostensibly radical properties. Bartlett’s natural storytelling abilities, shaped by his sensitive yet probing approach, make for an engaging read. This book inspires both enthusiasm and caution about radical […]
Audit 2017: How democratic and effective is the interest group process in the UK?
Between elections, the interest group process (along with media and social media coverage) is a key way in which citizens can seek to communicate with their MPs and other representatives, and to influence government policy-makers. As part of our 2017 Audit of UK Democracy, Patrick Dunleavy considers how far different social groups can gain access and […]
Democratic Audit's core funding is provided by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Additional funding is provided by the London School of Economics.