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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case For Mixed Electoral Systems, Loren King
Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case For Mixed Electoral Systems, Loren King
Political Science Faculty Publications
Liberal democracies encourage citizen participation and protect our freedoms, yet these regimes elect politicians and decide important issues with electoral and legislative systems that are less inclusive than other arrangements. Some citizens inevitably have more influence than others. Is this a problem? Yes, because similarly just but more inclusive systems are possible. Political theorists and philosophers should be arguing for particular institutional forms, with particular geographies, consistent with justice.
Les démocraties libérales encouragent la participation citoyenne et protègent nos libertés. Pourtant, ces régimes élisent des politiciens et décident de problèmes importants via les systèmes électoral et législatif, qui sont moins …
Compared To What? Judicial Review And Other Veto Points In Contemporary Political Theory, David Watkins, Scott E. Lemieux
Compared To What? Judicial Review And Other Veto Points In Contemporary Political Theory, David Watkins, Scott E. Lemieux
Political Science Faculty Publications
Many democratic and jurisprudential theorists have too often uncritically accepted Alexander Bickel’s notion of “the countermajoritarian difficulty” when considering the relationship between judicial review and democracy; this is the case for arguments both for and against judicial review. This framework is both theoretically and empirically unsustainable. Democracy is not wholly synonymous with majoritarianism, and judicial review is not inherently countermajoritarian in the first place.
In modern democratic political systems, judicial review is one of many potential veto points. Since all modern democratic political systems contain veto points, the relevant and unexplored question is what qualities might make a veto point …