Literatura académica sobre el tema "Democratization Game theory"

We adopt a game theory approach that considers democratization as the result of strategic interactions between government and nongovernment actors in East and Southeast Asia, and test the implications systematically with data from South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. This makes three contributions to scholarship. First, the synergy of a game theory framework based on area studies information draws attention to the conditions under which players’ threats or actions are credible, to support inclusive theory-building. Second, the consistent findings across East and Southeast Asian countries often cited as critical cases on opposite sides of larger debates in the discipline, and across different operationalizations of democratization, support the idea that democratization occurs under weak economic conditions. Third, our rigorous tests beyond regime change-over, and across empirically derived heuristics of time span, fill theoretical and empirical lapses in order to adjudicate democratization in the region and provide a clear theoretical and empirical lens for current and future analyses.

Inequality and democracy are far more compatible empirically than social conflict theory predicts. This article speaks to this puzzle, identifying the scope conditions under which democratization induces greater redistribution. Because autocrats sometimes have incentives to expropriate economic elites, who lack reliable institutions to protect their rights, elites may prefer democracy to autocratic rule if they can impose roadblocks to redistribution under democracyex ante. Using global panel data (1972–2008), this study finds that there is a relationship between democracy and redistribution only if elites are politically weak during a transition; for example, when there is revolutionary pressure. Redistribution is also greater if a democratic regime can avoid adopting and operating under a constitution written by outgoing elites and instead create a new constitution that redefines the political game. This finding holds across three different measures of redistribution and instrumental variables estimation. This article also documents the ways in which elites ‘bias’ democratic institutions.

Recent breakthroughs in deep-learning algorithms enable dreams of artificial intelligence (AI) getting close to reality. AI-based technologies are now being developed rapidly, including service and industrial robots, autonomous and self-driving vehicles. This work proposes Two-Way Deepnets (TW-Deepnets) trained using the physics-law-based models such as finite element method (FEM), smoothed FEM (S-FEM), and meshfree models, for real-time computations of both forward and inverse mechanics problems of materials and structures. First, unique features of physics-law-based models and data-based models are analyzed in theory. The training characteristics of deepnets for forward problems governed by physics-laws are then investigated, when an FEM (or S-FEM) model is used as the trainer. The training convergence rates of such an FEM-AI model are examined in relation to the property of the system matrix of the FEM model for deepnets. Next, a study on the training characteristics of deepnets for inverse problems, when the forward FEM-trained AI Deepnets are used as the trainer to train an AI model for inverse analyses. Next, a discussion is conducted on the roles of regularization techniques to overcome the ill-posedness of inverse problems in deepnet structures for noisy data. Finally, TW-Deepnets (FEM-AI and AI-AI models) are presented for real-time analyses of both forward and inverse problems of materials and structures with high-dimensional parameter space. The major finding of this study is as follows: (1) The understandings on the fundamental features of both data-based and physics-based methods is critical for creations of novel game-changing computational methods, which take advantages of both types of methods; (2) The good property of the system matrix of FEM allows effective training of FEM-AI deepnets for forward mechanics problems; (3) Our new technique to training inverse deepnets using FEM-AI deepnets as a surrogate model offers an innovative means, to effectively train deepnets for solving inverse mechanics problems; (4) The TW-Deepnets is capable of performing real-time analysis of both forward and inverse problems of materials and structures with high-dimensional parameter spaces; (5) Such TW-Deepnets can be easily utilized by the mass: a transformative new concept of AI-enabling democratization of complicated computational technology in modeling and simulation.

AbstractElite theory enjoyed a remarkable revival in Central and Eastern Europe, and also in international social science research, during the 1990s. Many researchers coming from different schools of thought turned to the analysis of rapid political and social changes and ended up doing centered research. Since democratic transition and elite transformation seemed to be parallel processes, it was understandable that sociologists and political scientists of the region started to use elite theory. The idea of "third wave" of democratization advanced a reduced, more synthetic, "exportable" understanding of democracy in the political science literature. The main focus of social sciences shifted from structures to actors, from path dependency to institutional choices. Transitions, roundtable negotiations, institution-building, constitution-making, compromise-seeking, pactmaking, pact-breaking, strategic choices — all of these underlined the importance of elites and research on them. Elite settlements were seen as alternatives of social revolution. According to a widely shared view democratic institutions came into existence through negotiations and compromises among political elites calculating their own interests and desires. The elite settlement approach was then followed by some important contributions in transitology which described the process of regime change largely as "elite games." By offering a systematic overview of the theoretical interpretations of elite change from New Class theory to recent theorizing of elite change (conversion of capital, reproduction, circulation, political capitalism, technocratic continuity, three elites and the like), the paper also gives an account of the state of the arts in elite studies in different new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.

In the context of humanization and democratization of the educational space, the issues of comprehensive development of preschool-age child, development of his creative potential, national consciousness, independence and formation of interaction skills with other people become especially relevant. The development of the theory and practice of preschool education in Ukraine makes it possible to state today the forms today, methods and techniques of the educational process are being improved. Today there is a need for purposeful development of logical methods of thinking of preschoolers, which is provided, first of all, in the process of formation of elementary mathematical representations. The main place in this process belongs to the development of cognitive interest of preschoolers. The article has shown that it will have a positive effect on the expansion of the outlook of preschool children and will help to consolidate basic mathematical ideas of creating such an educational environment, when these classes will be combined with the use of means of choreographic influence. The purpose of the article – using elements of rhythm and choreography to integrate mathematical content in the play activities of preschool children. A search and bibliographic tool is used to collect, accumulate, and describe the necessary information sources by us; analysis and synthesis – to organize the procedure of research search; methods of generalization and systematization – for rational processing of the obtained results. Today, in order to form a comprehensive picture of the world and the ability of students to apply their knowledge in typical as well as atypical situations, modern preschool education should be directed not at the acquisition of individual knowledge from different fields by children, but at their integration. Educators need to organize the educational-cognitive process so that it stimulates the cognitive-search, mathematical activity of children, develops the ability to make assumptions, find out contradictions, formulate decisions. The article substantiates the importance of using the kindergarten preschool institutions to entertain the potential of mathematical and choreographic play. Examples of such games are provided. Having been preparing children for study at the New Ukrainian School, the caregivers should pay particular attention to integrating logic and mathematical development with other artistic pursuits. In particular, the combination with various forms of choreographic activity is quite successful.

A theory that provides intuitive understanding of a process a s complex as simultaneous political regime transition and growth in economic income would be a valuable addition to Political Science. In this paper, I attempt to provide such an explanation by emplo ying simple insights from evolutionary game theory and developing their application to politico-economic transitions by borrowing freely from various other bodies of literature including economic growth, spatial voting models, and comparative politics. The result is a theoretical frame that comfortably deals with transition as a relatively smoother dynamic and provides some explanation for how regime transition might occur. It also provide's an example of a learning strategy for politicians, which generates the credibility required for successful economic reform and a rationale for democratization.

Explorations of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI), the arts, and design have existed throughout the historical development of AI. We are currently witnessing exponential growth in the application of Machine Learning (ML) and AI in all domains of art (visual, sonic, performing, spatial, transmedia, audiovisual, and narrative) in parallel with activity in the field that is so rapid that publication can not keep pace. In dialogue with our contemplation about this development in the arts, authors in this issue answer with questions of their own. Through questioning authorship and ethics, autonomy and automation, exploring the contribution of art to AI, algorithmic bias, control structures, machine intelligence in public art, formalization of aesthetics, the production of culture, socio-technical dimensions, relationships to games and aesthetics, and democratization of machine-based creative tools the contributors provide a multifaceted view into crucial dimensions of the present and future of creative AI. In this Artnodes special issue, we pose the question: Does generative and machine creativity in the arts and design represent an evolution of “artistic intelligence,” or is it a metamorphosis of creative practice yielding fundamentally distinct forms and modes of authorship?

Complex systems are an invention of the universe. It is not at all clear that science has an a priori primacy claim to the study of complex systems. (Galanter 5) Introduction In popular dialogues, describing a system as “complex” is often the point of resignation, inferring that the system cannot be sufficiently described, predicted nor managed. Transport networks, management infrastructure and supply chain logistics are all often described in this way. In socio-cultural terms “complex” is used to describe those humanistic systems that are “intricate, involved, complicated, dynamic, multi-dimensional, interconnected systems [such as] transnational citizenship, communities, identities, multiple belongings, overlapping geographies and competing histories” (Cahir & James). Academic dialogues have begun to explore the collective behaviors of complex systems to define a complex system specifically as an adaptive one; i.e. a system that demonstrates ‘self organising’ principles and ‘emergent’ properties. Based upon the key principles of interaction and emergence in relation to adaptive and self organising systems in cultural artifacts and processes, this paper will argue that complex systems are cultural systems. By introducing generic principles of complex systems, and looking at the exploration of such principles in art, design and media research, this paper argues that a science of cultural systems as part of complex systems theory is the post modern science for the digital age. Furthermore, that such a science was predicated by post structuralism and has been manifest in art, design and media practice since the late 1960s. Complex Systems Theory Complexity theory grew out of systems theory, an holistic approach to analysis that views whole systems based upon the links and interactions between the component parts and their relationship to each other and the environment within they exists. This stands in stark contrast to conventional science which is based upon Descartes’s reductionism, where the aim is to analyse systems by reducing something to its component parts (Wilson 3). As systems thinking is concerned with relationships more than elements, it proposes that in complex systems, small catalysts can cause large changes and that a change in one area of a system can adversely affect another area of the system. As is apparent, systems theory is a way of thinking rather than a specific set of rules, and similarly there is no single unified Theory of Complexity, but several different theories have arisen from the natural sciences, mathematics and computing. As such, the study of complex systems is very interdisciplinary and encompasses more than one theoretical framework. Whilst key ideas of complexity theory developed through artificial intelligence and robotics research, other important contributions came from thermodynamics, biology, sociology, physics, economics and law. In her volume for the Elsevier Advanced Management Series, “Complex Systems and Evolutionary Perspectives on Organisations”, Eve Mitleton-Kelly describes a comprehensive overview of this evolution as five main areas of research: complex adaptive systems dissipative structures autopoiesis (non-equilibrium) social systems chaos theory path dependence Here, Mitleton-Kelly points out that relatively little work has been done on developing a specific theory of complex social systems, despite much interest in complexity and its application to management (Mitleton-Kelly 4). To this end, she goes on to define the term “complex evolving system” as more appropriate to the field than ‘complex adaptive system’ and suggests that the term “complex behaviour” is thus more useful in social contexts (Mitleton-Kelly). For our purpose here, “complex systems” will be the general term used to describe those systems that are diverse and made up of multiple interdependent elements, that are often ‘adaptive’, in that they have the capacity to change and learn from events. This is in itself both ‘evolutionary’ and ‘behavioural’ and can be understood as emerging from the interaction of autonomous agents – especially people. Some generic principles of complex systems defined by Mitleton Kelly that are of concern here are: self-organisation emergence interdependence feedback space of possibilities co-evolving creation of new order Whilst the behaviours of complex systems clearly do not fall into our conventional top down perception of management and production, anticipating such behaviours is becoming more and more essential for products, processes and policies. For example, compare the traditional top down model of news generation, distribution and consumption to the “emerging media eco-system” (Bowman and Willis 14). Figure 1 (Bowman & Willis 10) Figure 2 (Bowman & Willis 12) To the traditional news organisations, such a “democratization of production” (McLuhan 230) has been a huge cause for concern. The agencies once solely responsible for the representation of reality are now lost in a global miasma of competing perspectives. Can we anticipate and account for complex behaviours? Eve Mitleton Kelly states that “if organisations are understood as complex evolving systems co-evolving as part of a social ‘ecosystem’, then that changed perspective changes ways of acting and relating which lead to a different way of working. Thus, management strategy changes, and our organizational design paradigms evolve as new types of relationships and ways of working provide the conditions for the emergence of new organisational forms” (Mitleton-Kelly 6). Complexity in Design It is thus through design practice and processes that discovering methods for anticipating complex systems behaviours seem most possible. The Embracing Complexity in Design (ECiD) research programme, is a contemporary interdisciplinary research cluster consisting of academics and designers from architectural engineering, robotics, geography, digital media, sustainable design, and computing aiming to explore the possibility of trans disciplinary principles of complexity in design. Over arching this work is the conviction that design can be seen as model for complex systems researchers motivated by applying complexity science in particular domains. Key areas in which design and complexity interact have been established by this research cluster. Most immediately, many designed products and systems are inherently complex to design in the ordinary sense. For example, when designing vehicles, architecture, microchips designers need to understand complex dynamic processes used to fabricate and manufacture products and systems. The social and economic context of design is also complex, from market economics and legal regulation to social trends and mass culture. The process of designing can also involve complex social dynamics, with many people processing and exchanging complex heterogeneous information over complex human and communication networks, in the context of many changing constraints. Current key research questions are: how can the methods of complex systems science inform designers? how can design inform research into complex systems? Whilst ECiD acknowledges that to answer such questions effectively the theoretical and methodological relations between complexity science and design need further exploration and enquiry, there are no reliable precedents for such an activity across the sciences and the arts in general. Indeed, even in areas where a convergence of humanities methodology with scientific practice might seem to be most pertinent, most examples are few and far between. In his paper “Post Structuralism, Hypertext & the World Wide Web”, Luke Tredennick states that “despite the concentration of post-structuralism on text and texts, the study of information has largely failed to exploit post-structuralist theory” (Tredennick 5). Yet it is surely in the convergence of art and design with computation and the media that a search for practical trans-metadisciplinary methodologies might be most fruitful. It is in design for interactive media, where algorithms meet graphics, where the user can interact, adapt and amend, that self-organisation, emergence, interdependence, feedback, the space of possibilities, co-evolution and the creation of new order are embraced on a day to day basis by designers. A digitally interactive environment such as the World Wide Web, clearly demonstrates all the key aspects of a complex system. Indeed, it has already been described as a ‘complexity machine’ (Qvortup 9). It is important to remember that this ‘complexity machine’ has been designed. It is an intentional facility. It may display all the characteristics of complexity but, whilst some of its attributes are most demonstrative of self organisation and emergence, the Internet itself has not emerged spontaneously. For example, Tredinnick details the evolution of the World Wide Web through the Memex machine of Vannevar Bush, through Ted Nelsons hypertext system Xanadu to Tim Berners-Lee’s Enquire (Tredennick 3). The Internet was engineered. So, whilst we may not be able to entirely predict complex behavior, we can, and do, quite clearly design for it. When designing digitally interactive artifacts we design parameters or co ordinates to define the space within which a conceptual process will take place. We can never begin to predict precisely what those processes might become through interaction, emergence and self organisation, but we can establish conceptual parameters that guide and delineate the space of possibilities. Indeed this fact is so transparently obvious that many commentators in the humanities have been pushed to remark that interaction is merely interpretation, and so called new media is not new at all; that one interacts with a book in much the same way as a digital artifact. After all, post-structuralist theory had established the “death of the author” in the 1970s – the a priori that all cultural artifacts are open to interpretation, where all meanings must be completed by the reader. The concept of the “open work” (Eco 6) has been an established post modern concept for over 30 years and is commonly recognised as a feature of surrealist montage, poetry, the writings of James Joyce, even advertising design, where a purposive space for engagement and interpretation of a message is designated, without which the communication does not “work”. However, this concept is also most successfully employed in relation to installation art and, more recently, interactive art as a reflection of the artist’s conscious decision to leave part of a work open to interpretation and/or interaction. Art & Complex Systems One of the key projects of Embracing Complexity in Design has been to look at the relationship between art and complex systems. There is a relatively well established history of exploring art objects as complex systems in themselves that finds its origins in the systems art movement of the 1970s. In his paper “Observing ‘Systems Art’ from a Systems-Theroretical Perspective”, Francis Halsall defines systems art as “emerging in the 1960s and 1970s as a new paradigm in artistic practice … displaying an interest in the aesthetics of networks, the exploitation of new technology and New Media, unstable or de-materialised physicality, the prioritising of non-visual aspects, and an engagement (often politicised) with the institutional systems of support (such as the gallery, discourse, or the market) within which it occurs” (Halsall 7). More contemporarily, “Open Systems: Rethinking Art c.1970”, at Tate Modern, London, focuses upon systems artists “rejection of art’s traditional focus on the object, to wide-ranging experiments al focus on the object, to wide-ranging experiments with media that included dance, performance and…film & video” (De Salvo 3). Artists include Andy Warhol, Richard Long, Gilbert & George, Sol Lewitt, Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman. In 2002, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New York, held an international exhibition entitled “Complexity; Art & Complex Systems”, that was concerned with “art as a distinct discipline offer[ing] its own unique approache[s] and epistemic standards in the consideration of complexity” (Galanter and Levy 5), and the organisers go on to describe four ways in which artists engage the realm of complexity: presentations of natural complex phenomena that transcend conventional scientific visualisation descriptive systems which describe complex systems in an innovative and often idiosyncratic way commentary on complexity science itself technical applications of genetic algorithms, neural networks and a-life ECiD artist Julian Burton makes work that visualises how companies operate in specific relation to their approach to change and innovation. He is a strategic artist and facilitator who makes “pictures of problems to help people talk about them” (Burton). Clients include public and private sector organisations such as Barclays, Shell, Prudential, KPMG and the NHS. He is quoted as saying “Pictures are a powerful way to engage and focus a group’s attention on crucial issues and challenges, and enable them to grasp complex situations quickly. I try and create visual catalysts that capture the major themes of a workshop, meeting or strategy and re-present them in an engaging way to provoke lively conversations” (Burton). This is a simple and direct method of using art as a knowledge elicitation tool that falls into the first and second categories above. The third category is demonstrated by the ground breaking TechnoSphere, that was specifically inspired by complexity theory, landscape and artificial life. Launched in 1995 as an Arts Council funded online digital environment it was created by Jane Prophet and Gordon Selley. TechnoSphere is a virtual world, populated by artificial life forms created by users of the World Wide Web. The digital ecology of the 3D world, housed on a server, depends on the participation of an on-line public who accesses the world via the Internet. At the time of writing it has attracted over a 100,000 users who have created over a million creatures. The artistic exploration of technical applications is by default a key field for researching the convergence of trans-metadisciplinary methodologies. Troy Innocent’s lifeSigns evolves multiple digital media languages “expressed as a virtual world – through form, structure, colour, sound, motion, surface and behaviour” (Innocent). The work explores the idea of “emergent language through play – the idea that new meanings may be generated through interaction between human and digital agents”. Thus this artwork combines three areas of converging research – artificial life; computational semiotics and digital games. In his paper “What Is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory”, Philip Galanter describes all art as generative on the basis that it is created from the application of rules. Yet, as demonstrated above, what is significantly different and important about digital interactivity, as opposed to its predecessor, interpretation, is its provision of a graphical user interface (GUI) to component parts of a text such as symbol, metaphor, narrative, etc for the multiple “authors” and the multiple “readers” in a digitally interactive space of possibility. This offers us tangible, instantaneous reproduction and dissemination of interpretations of an artwork. Conclusion: Digital Interactivity – A Complex Medium Digital interaction of any sort is thus a graphic model of the complex process of communication. Here, complexity does not need deconstructing, representing nor modelling, as the aesthetics (as in apprehended by the senses) of the graphical user interface conveniently come first. Design for digital interactive media is thus design for complex adaptive systems. The theoretical and methodological relations between complexity science and design can clearly be expounded especially well through post-structuralism. The work of Barthes, Derrida & Foucault offers us the notion of all cultural artefacts as texts or systems of signs, whose meanings are not fixed but rather sustained by networks of relationships. Implemented in a digital environment post-structuralist theory is tangible complexity. Strangely, whilst Philip Galanter states that science has no necessary over reaching claim to the study of complexity, he then argues conversely that “contemporary art theory rooted in skeptical continental philosophy [reduces] art to social construction [as] postmodernism, deconstruction and critical theory [are] notoriously elusive, slippery, and overlapping terms and ideas…that in fact [are] in the business of destabilising apparently clear and universal propositions” (4). This seems to imply that for Galanter, post modern rejections of grand narratives necessarily will exclude the “new scientific paradigm” of complexity, a paradigm that he himself is looking to be universal. Whilst he cites Lyotard (6) describing both political and linguistic reasons why postmodern art celebrates plurality, denying any progress towards singular totalising views, he fails to appreciate what happens if that singular totalising view incorporates interactivity? Surely complexity is pluralistic by its very nature? In the same vein, if language for Derrida is “an unfixed system of traces and differences … regardless of the intent of the authored texts … with multiple equally legitimate meanings” (Galanter 7) then I have heard no better description of the signifiers, signifieds, connotations and denotations of digital culture. Complexity in its entirety can also be conversely understood as the impact of digital interactivity upon culture per se which has a complex causal relation in itself; Qvortups notion of a “communications event” (9) such as the Danish publication of the Mohammed cartoons falls into this category. Yet a complex causality could be traced further into cultural processes enlightening media theory; from the relationship between advertising campaigns and brand development; to the exposure and trajectory of the celebrity; describing the evolution of visual language in media cultures and informing the relationship between exposure to representation and behaviour. In digital interaction the terms art, design and media converge into a process driven, performative event that demonstrates emergence through autopoietic processes within a designated space of possibility. By insisting that all artwork is generative Galanter, like many other writers, negates the medium entirely which allows him to insist that generative art is “ideologically neutral” (Galanter 10). Generative art, like all digitally interactive artifacts are not neutral but rather ideologically plural. Thus, if one integrates Qvortups (8) delineation of medium theory and complexity theory we may have what we need; a first theory of a complex medium. Through interactive media complexity theory is the first post modern science; the first science of culture. References Bowman, Shane, and Chris Willis. We Media. 21 Sep. 2003. 9 March 2007 http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php>. Burton, Julian. “Hedron People.” 9 March 2007 http://www.hedron.com/network/assoc.php4?associate_id=14>. Cahir, Jayde, and Sarah James. “Complex: Call for Papers.” M/C Journal 9 Sep. 2006. 7 March 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/journal/upcoming.php>. De Salvo, Donna, ed. Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970. London: Tate Gallery Press, 2005. Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989. Galanter, Phillip, and Ellen K. Levy. Complexity: Art & Complex Systems. SDMA Gallery Guide, 2002. Galanter, Phillip. “Against Reductionism: Science, Complexity, Art & Complexity Studies.” 2003. 9 March 2007 http://isce.edu/ISCE_Group_Site/web-content/ISCE_Events/ Norwood_2002/Norwood_2002_Papers/Galanter.pdf>. Halsall, Francis. “Observing ‘Systems-Art’ from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective”. CHArt 2005. 9 March 2007 http://www.chart.ac.uk/chart2005/abstracts/halsall.htm>. Innocent, Troy. “Life Signs.” 9 March 2007 http://www.iconica.org/main.htm>. Johnson, Jeffrey. “Embracing Complexity in Design (ECiD).” 2007. 9 March 2007 http://www.complexityanddesign.net/>. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1962. Mitleton-Kelly, Eve, ed. Complex Systems and Evolutionary Perspectives on Organisations. Elsevier Advanced Management Series, 2003. Prophet, Jane. “Jane Prophet.” 9 March 2007 http://www.janeprophet.co.uk/>. Qvortup, Lars. “Understanding New Digital Media.” European Journal of Communication 21.3 (2006): 345-356. Tedinnick, Luke. “Post Structuralism, Hypertext & the World Wide Web.” Aslib 59.2 (2007): 169-186. Wilson, Edward Osborne. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: A.A. Knoff, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Cham, Karen, and Jeffrey Johnson. "Complexity Theory: A Science of Cultural Systems?." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/08-cham-johnson.php>. APA Style Cham, K., and J. Johnson. (Jun. 2007) "Complexity Theory: A Science of Cultural Systems?," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/08-cham-johnson.php>.

Thesis (M.S. in Information Operations)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2008.
Thesis Advisor(s): Gregg, Heather S. "December 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 29, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-59). Also available in print.

Deliberative democracy has been the main game in contemporary political theory for two decades and has grown enormously in size and importance in political science and many other disciplines, and in political practice. The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy takes stock of deliberative democracy as a research field, as well as exploring and creating links with multiple disciplines and policy practice around the globe. It provides a concise history of deliberative ideals in political thought while also discussing their philosophical origins. It locates deliberation in a political system with different spaces, publics, and venues, including parliament and courts but also governance networks, protests, mini-publics, old and new media, and everyday talk. It documents the intersections of deliberative ideals with contemporary political theory, involving epistemology, representation, constitutionalism, justice, and multiculturalism. It explores the intersections of deliberative democracy with major research fields in the social sciences and law, including social and rational choice theory, communications, psychology, sociology, international relations, framing approaches, policy analysis, planning, democratization, and methodology. It engages with practical applications, mapping deliberation as a reform movement and as a device for conflict resolution. It documents the practice and study of deliberative democracy around the world, in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and global governance. And it provides reflections on the field by pioneering thinkers.

This book throws new light on the reciprocal relationship between political modernization and authoritarianism in Germany over the span of six decades. Election battles were fought so fiercely in Imperial Germany because they reflected two kinds of democratization. Social democratization could not be stopped; but political democratization was opposed by many members of the German bourgeoisie. Frightened by the electoral success of Social Democrats after 1871, anti-democrats deployed many strategies that flew in the face of electoral fairness. They battled socialists, liberals, and Jews at election time, but they also strove to rewrite the electoral rules of the game. Using a regional lens to rethink older assumptions about Germany’s changing political culture, this book focuses as much on contemporary Germans’ perceptions of electoral fairness as on their experiences of voting. It devotes special attention to various semi-democratic voting systems whereby a general and equal suffrage (for the Reichstag) was combined with limited and unequal ones for local and regional parliaments. For the first time, democratization at all three tiers of governance and their reciprocal effects are considered together. Although the bourgeois face of German authoritarianism was nowhere more evident than in the Kingdom of Saxony, this book illustrates how Germans grew to fear the spectre of democracy. Certainly twists and turns lay ahead, yet that fear made it easier for Hitler and the Nazis to inter German democracy in 1933.

AbstractThe chapter in its first part presents changing understanding of leisure time in the past and currently. Major shifts have occurred in the increasing amount of free time and its democratization. The free time or leisure time is understood only just as a supplement or the rest after work; however, it has its intrinsic value, carries potential of freedom, self-realization, fun and relax. The text deals with leisure time functions and its meaning for individuals and complete family. It highlights issues that are connected with spending of leisure time. In the second part of the chapter, there are results of survey, which was mapping of family spending of free time, its amount and fulfilment. In all the surveyed countries, spending of leisure time has proved to be an important perquisite for family life satisfaction. Activities that are the most likely to be undertaken together with family members are watching TV, walks, trips, visits of friends or relatives, visits of cultural actions and social games.

This chapter illuminates how education can be a game changer in the endeavor for attaining sustainable development in sub-Sahara Africa. Postmodern society is characterized by the quest for equity. Equity is an essential prerequisite to sustainable development which in turn necessitate lasting peace, economic and social well-being, among others. We need curricula responsive to postmodern society which would warrant socioeconomic and environmentally sustainable development. Today, there is a significant move towards educational expansion. There has been irregularity in success rates, however. Constituents of developing countries have been struggling to influence their government through the democratization process to open more schools and universities. Yet, accessibility has to be accompanied with quality. This can be achieved by enhancing privatization of education and the effectiveness of the regulatory role of responsible government. So, this chapter is a discourse extending beyond education for sustainable development in to education for sustainable life.

The stories of Robin Hood constitute the collective memory of popular counter-culture. The chapter entitled “Green Arrow” posits the legends of the green wood as the antecedent for this successful comic book series, but any look at Robin Hood leads also to the contested medievalisms of James Macpherson and Thomas Percy, the relationship of these men with Samuel Johnson, and the democratization of their vision through the work of the American scholar Francis James Child. Child, in turn, brings into our gaze the Boston Brahmin Charles Eliot Norton and, through him, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow before we return once again to Howard Pyle whose singular vision, perhaps more than any other person, has shaped so much of how the 20th century sees the Middle Ages.

This epilogue offers a brief synopsis of each previous chapter and the overall arguments of the book. It also ponders how subaltern subjects, before the democratization of who can record and disseminate their worldview, refused or in some way manipulated the interpellating, imperial gaze. Though most of the book is concerned with how Dominican subjects negotiate being ghosted from various Western imaginaries, the epilogue considers the power of not being legible and not being recorded for posterity. It considers a short film and a photograph to muse on the difference between being recognized as a full human and as a citizen subject with full rights and being surveilled and quantified. I argue that the short film—which advertises a designer brand— and a rare 1904 photograph of a young Dominican girl, show a third space in which subaltern subjects were recorded as they refused the label of Otherness.

How did French voters decide whom to elect to office, or which option to support in referendums? Just as declared candidatures were long resisted, so overt campaigning was condemned by custom. Yet electioneering had always been conducted, albeit in a discreet fashion, by word of mouth among family and friends, or at the electoral assemblies in which voting was conducted until 1848. The advent of a mass suffrage would ultimately change the rules of the game, but the promotion of particular individuals was long regarded unfavourably. As new practices developed, so the boundary between simply canvassing for votes and using corrupt means to secure them became more blurred. The French case suggests that there is no simple equation between democratization and a reduction in electoral fraud, for a bigger electorate offered more scope for bribery and intimidation. However, demands for electoral integrity, together with greater secrecy of the vote, gradually curbed malpractice towards the end of the nineteenth century, though new forms of fraud have emerged in the age of the Internet.

Social media has played important roles in social movements in many parts of the world. It has been used to raise people's awareness about the injustice they suffer as well as to mobilize them to challenge a repressive government. Social media enables people to define public interests by themselves, taking over the role previously taken by elites. It is all due to its simplicity which allows anyone to be both a producer and consumer of information. Citizens are no longer the spectators of political games played by the elites, but they can participate and even mobilize public opinions challenging those in power. The possibility of anonymous interactions allows anyone to express any view without the fear of disapproval and sanction, which leads to the plurality of discourse, which in turn increases the possibility of democratization. However, the impact of social media is not deterministic, and it is not always beneficial to public. Even those in power can use it to preserve the existing hierarchy of power.