This book operationalizes the idea of political representation, which is fundamental to modern democracies. Both individual representatives and representative bodies are evaluated using the indices of popularity (the average percentage of the population whose opinion is represented on topical policy issues) and universality (the percentage of issues for which the prevailing public opinion is represented). Viewed as objective functions, these indices can aid in the search for optimal representatives and representative bodies. By replacing the consistency analysis of the social choice axioms with the calculation of the best compromises, the paradoxes of social choice, such as those of Condorcet and Arrow, can be overcome. These indices also form the core of an alternative election method that is aimed at enhancing policy representation — a recent concept of political representation, which is not supported by the conventional voting systems shaped during the American and French Revolutions. This method is tested in a series of election experiments that focus on implementation details. In addition, non-societal applications such as MCDM, finance or traffic control are considered, where the objects that reflect the properties or behavior of other objects are regarded as their “representatives.” Given its scope, the book will appeal to political scientists, economists and operations researchers, as well as to politicians interested in improving democratic performance and electoral system design.

Using ideas derived from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, this book develops key elements of a radical theory of democracy that challenges both the assumptions and commitments of contemporary neo-liberalism.

What are the prospects of the liberal democratic form of state spreading throughout the world? Democracy and the Global System analyses the relationship between liberal democracy and the international system while developing a critique of liberal internationalism. Fabian Biancardi examines some of the key questions of modern politics and the major ideas of a number of significant authors and texts. While sympathetic to the aim of spreading liberal democracy, he demonstrates the many tensions and contradictions involved in achieving this outcome.

Whereas ‘democracy’ assumes a single demos or people, ‘demoi-cracy’ refers to democratic government and governance in a polity constituted by separate peoples. Since the European Union consists of many demoi with different collective identities, largely separate public spheres, and a predominantly national political infrastructure, demoi-cracy is an appropriate standard for the analysis and evaluation of democracy in the EU. In its vertical dimension, demoi-cracy is based on the equality and interaction of citizens’ and statespeoples’ representatives in the making of common policies. Horizontally, it seeks to balance equal transnational rights of citizens with national policy-making autonomy. This volume offers exemplary studies exploring the potential for and the workings of demoi-cracy in the EU across a broad range of institutions and issues in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions. In particular, the contributions address the following questions: Is demoi-cracy relevant to citizen attitudes and public discourse on the EU’s legitimacy? How do national and supranational democratic institutions interact? Do the EU’s modes of governance, such as regulation through agencies, mutual recognition, and the open method of coordination, meet demoi-cratic expectations? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Cultural Complexes and the Soul of America explores many of the cultural complexes that comprise the collective psychic-filtering system of emotions, ideas, and beliefs that possess the United States today. With chapters by an international selection of leading authors, the book covers ideas both broad and specific, and presents unique insight into the current state of the nation. The voices included in this volume amplify contemporary concerns, linking them to themes which have existed in the American psyche for decades while also looking to the future. Part One examines meta themes, including history, purity, dominion, and democracy in the age of Trump. Part Two looks at key complexes including race, gender, the environment, immigration, national character, and medicine. The overall message is that it is in wrestling with these complexes that the soul of America is forged or undone. This highly relevant book will be essential reading for academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian ideas, politics, sociology, and American studies. It will also be of great interest to Jungian analysts in practice and in training, and anyone interested in the current state of the US.

This guidebook for students offers a survey of comparative politics intended for use in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the world's great cities, but its political future has never been hazier. Mass protests, contested elections, a 2047 transition causing uncertainty in financial and business elites- for Hong Kong, it is the best of times as well as the worst of times. Hong Kong University politics scholar Matthew Wong brings a clear-headed and fact-based approach, introducing Hong Kong to scholars of comparative politics even as he introduces comparative politics to students in Hong Kong, with this new area-specific reference work, a mix of theory and insights into how political theory can be of value in understanding the case of Hong Kong, complete with datasets and quantitative information that helps to disentangle fact from myth. For Hong Kong residents, scholars, students, and members of civil society, this book will be a breath of fresh air.

The book is about showing different ways of doing ethics, highlighting a kind of methodological pluralism. This book attempts to relate the difference in methodology and perspective to difference in identity, focal point of analysis, or projects of persuasion. Difference matters ultimately because pluralism matters. This book is a tutorial in ethical analysis and reasoning. Seminarians and graduate students will be brought into the finer points of ethical analysis, of mastering the ins and outs of ethical methodology, by immersing themselves in critical social-ethical analyses of prominent scholars in the American academy. Students will be guided toward how to develop their own voice in social issues, hone their capability in social analysis, and critically engage the social sciences, history, philosophy, and literature as they embark on ethical analyses. There is no single way of teaching the methodology of social ethics and no single theory of ethics that satisfies all; therefore ethics and its methodology are better understood by enabling students to view the field through multiple "windows." Simultaneously they will learn to view social reality from different perspectives. The seven chapters of this book explore the different ways American ethicists have interrogated their nation's moral systems or crafted methods for understanding them.

The proportionality principle has become ever more important in European law and elsewhere. The career of the principle has attracted considerable attention from legal practitioners, legal theorists and political scientists alike, but the debate so far has been quite fragmented. In this new book the author offers a broad and systematic analysis of the proportionality principle. Discussing and comparing proportionality analysis as applied by European courts in part one of the book, the author proceeds to contrast proportionality analysis with alternative assessment schemes. In the third part of the book the author reaches beyond doctrinal reconstructions as he deciphers the functions of proportionality jurisprudence. In view of the various facets of proportionality analysis the author departs from the asserted infringement of a legally protected position by some regulatory act, proceeds to discuss the legitimacy of this intervention and undertakes an analysis of its suitability, appropriateness and necessity. According to the author, the safe grounds of proportionality means-ends rationality do not suffice where the legitimacy of an infringement has to be assessed, where conflicting values have to be “balanced” or where courts engage in a proportionality analysis “stricto sensu”. In the concluding remarks, the author proposes how proportionality analysis may be structured in order to better secure the legitimacy of the analysis.

This collection examines the nature, scope and prospects for political opposition under African National Congress political dominance.