From the theater to the hippodrome: A critique of Jeffrey Green’s theory of plebiscitary democracy and an alternative

The article argues that the theory of plebiscitary leader democracy (PLD), originally developed by Max Weber, is in its somewhat rejuvenated version a helpful framework in interpreting longer-term and more recent empirical trends in contemporary democracies, such as the growing personalization of politics, the emergence of populist leaders, rising levels of polarization, and the growing importance of social media. However, to realize the potential of the theory, it should be detached from Jeffrey Green’s most original, yet insufficiently realistic elaboration of plebiscitary democracy that he made a decade ago. The article argues that instead of a passive and unifiable entity, the citizenry should be thought of as reactive and deeply divided, a setting which can be characterized by the metaphor of the infamous Byzantine chariot races rather than that of the theater, implicit in Green’s theory. Plebiscitary democracy should be thought of as representational, where popular control is manifested as the veto power of the popular voice. Additionally, despite its realist minimalism, the theory we propose may still have some critical potential, because it adopts the refurbished ideal of competition. The article closes by identifying further avenues of theoretization leading towards a more elaborate view of PLD.

Historical, legal, ideological and political prerequisites for the formation and development of the institution of people’s control in the USSR

Introduction. The controversial nature of most of the aspects related to the content and essence of people’s control, the assessment of its historical role and significance in the system of state administration of the Soviet period, the effectiveness of legal regulation and the political problems of its implementation still arouses a genuine interest of the scientific community in the study of this phenomenon. Theoretical analysis. People’s control in the USSR was both a developed ideological and political concept and a real political and legal institution. The founder of the concept of people’s control was V. I. Lenin, who, in his numerous works, described a clear justification of its relevance in the conditions of socialist democracy. Empirical analysis. It was revealed that the process of development of the institution of people’s control in Soviet Russia was largely influenced by the worldview of the country’s top leadership, which demonstrated polymorphism of opinions on the role and significance of popular control in the system of socialist governance. There are three stages of formation and functioning of the system of people’s control in Soviet Russia, which had their organizational and institutional features. Results. The study of the ideological, political and historical and legal prerequisites for formation of popular control led to the conclusion that popular control was a specific institution characteristic of the socialist type of government. It passed a rather difficult historical path: from workers’ control in the first years of Soviet power to a very complex organizational and institutional system of state and public control in the last decades of the existence of the USSR.

Must Egalitarians Condemn Representative Democracy?

Many contemporary democratic theorists are democratic egalitarians. They think that the distinctive value of democracy lies in equality. Yet this position faces a serious problem. All contemporary democracies are representative democracies. Such democracies are highly unequal: representatives have much more power than do ordinary citizens. So, it seems that democratic egalitarians must condemn representative democracies. In this paper, I present a solution to this problem. My solution invokes popular control. If representatives are under popular control, then their extra power is not objectionable. Unfortunately, so I argue, in the United States representatives are under loose popular control.

Why Constituent Power?

This chapter addresses the question of why a theory of constituent power in the EU is needed. While the EU has long since taken on a constitutional character, this is in no way reflected in adequate popular participation in decisions about its basic legal order. The EU is shaped through a combination of intergovernmental treaty making and integration through law that sidelines citizens. Constitutional mutation further decouples the EU’s constitutional development from popular control and shields fundamental decisions from democratic contestation. To capture the legitimacy gap that opens up here, the chapter introduces an understanding of constituent power as political autonomy at the level of constitutional politics. It argues that European integration is based on a usurpation, with constituted powers operating as de facto constituent powers. As executives and courts shape the EU in a largely self-referential manner, citizens are deprived of a crucial dimension of political autonomy. The chapter concludes with preliminary considerations on a theory of constituent power in the EU, addressing substantive and methodological challenges involved in its elaboration, as well as possible objections to the project as such.

How citizens evaluate participatory processes: a conjoint analysis

This study examines how characteristics of participatory processes affect citizens’ evaluations of such processes and thereby establish what kind of participatory process citizens demand. The literature on democratic innovations has proposed different criteria for evaluating participatory innovations. What remains unclear, however, is how citizens evaluate these participatory mechanisms. This is here examined in a conjoint analysis embedded in a representative survey of the Finnish population (n = 1050). The conjoint analysis examines the impact of inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgment, transparency, efficiency, and transferability on citizens’ evaluations of participatory processes. Furthermore, it is examined whether the evaluations differ by the policy issues and process preferences of the respondents. The results show that people want transparent participatory processes with face-to-face interaction among participants and expert advice to deal with complicated issues. The participatory processes should also be advisory and should not include too many meetings. These effects appear to be uniform across policy issues and do not depend on the process preferences of citizens.

Marx’s Social Republic

This chapter explores how Marx’s conception of the political institutions of socialism (the social republic) was inherited from the radical elements of the republican tradition. I explore three dimensions of this inheritance. First, I discuss his support for replacing the institutions of representative government with a form of popular delegacy, where representatives are constrained by imperative mandates, the right to recall, and short terms of office. Second, I explain why Marx criticized the separation of powers and preferred legislative supremacy over the executive. Third, I discuss Marx’s belief in the necessity of placing the state’s administrative and repressive functions under popular control, by transforming the standing army into a civic militia and making the bureaucracy elected, accountable, and deprofessionalized.

How citizens evaluate participatory processes: A conjoint analysis

This study examines how characteristics of participatory processes affect citizens' evaluations of such processes and thereby establish what kind of participatory process citizens demand. The literature on democratic innovations has proposed different criteria for evaluating participatory innovations. What remains unclear, however, is how citizens evaluate these participatory mechanisms. This is here examined in a conjoint analysis embedded in a representative survey of the Finnish population (n=1050). The conjoint examines the impact of inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgement, transparency, efficiency, and transferability on citizens’ evaluations of participatory processes. Furthermore, it is examined whether the evaluations differ by policy issue and process preference of the respondents. The results suggest that the criteria have important effects on citizens’ evaluations of participatory mechanisms and that these effects are relatively consistent across policy issue and process preferences.