Dave on In Chile, they are developing a new constitution; they have used citizen’s assemblies to develop the constitution. They will vote on it later this year. Here is a guide on the draft, in Spanish and in English, by Google translate. I know! Legal documents shouldn’t be translated.
Dave on I am tracking the CoFoE and the Citizens Panel 2 on Democracy and the Rule of Law has just reported, making 39 recommendations. Why are names of EU bodies always so long? Here are my notes on these recommendations. …
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Dave on Some notes based on the ERS’ document, “Close the Gap: Tackling Europe’s Democratic Deficit”. They have 12 proposals, seven of which suggest actions for the UK Parliament, two for political parties (other than Labour) and one each for the Council, Commission and Parliament. So not so much an EU deficit, more a UK paying attention problem. Mind you, they could pay more attention to what HMG is doing too. I read it once, and made some diigo notes, which I reproduce below/overleaf. …
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Dave on Do we have enough or do we have too many politicians? This is a quantity not quality issue. Here are my notes … Read More
Dave on Today, privacy campaigners have been circulating tweets about Brittany Kaiser’s document dump proving that Cambridge Analytics and AIG were working as a single entity. This would seem somewhat contrary to what the police and the ICO have been able to find. There’s more to find here and when I find it, I’ll post the stories here. Read More
Dave on As part of my English revolution reading, prompted by Arden’s Left Handed Liberty, I took a look at Magna Carta itself, what did it codify/concede? How relevant is it today? Here are my notes. … Read More
Dave on I was challenged by Michael Wilkinson of the LSE on my interpretation of he importance of the Cherry/Miller ruling on the legality of the 2019 prorogue. Suggested or discovered reading, included a review of a book he co-edited. My notes have lain around on my hard disk and I decided to tidy them up. Here are my notes and thoughts. From the reviews, I’d say the title is provocative but it might have a jargon meaning about which I am unclear. … Read More
Dave on Obviously with the results of the general election announced my mind turns to analysis and visualisation. I had/have been looking at this for a while, and here are my notes. Actually this is an index entry as much of what I had found is catalogued in the two related posts below/overleaf. … Read More
Dave on While writing and thinking about the democratic legitimacy of the Referendum, I discovered the work of Juan J Linz. This article initially hosted my thoughts on Linz’s views on the US Presidential system and its clones. I returned to it in the Autumn of 2021 when questions of why the founding fathers did it this way.
On, my article, Dictatorship and plebiscites I had been pointed at “Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe” a review by Fukiyama of Linz & Stepan’s revised work on Autocracy, which was also referenced by Qvortrup, Here is a mirror, on this site. The Fukiyama piece is very short and more of a plug than a review. I found the Linz paper, and link below, also here are further notes on Presidentialism and Parliaments. Read More
Dave on I was looking at the way democracy dies in Unions, with a whimper and came across these two articles, Trotskyism and Trade-Union Struggle from marxists.org and the Iron Law of Oligarchy, on Wikipedia. which points at further reading.
Dave on Lewisham Council, are looking at their constitution to see if they make it more democratic. They are running a consultation which started in 2018 and is planned to finish and I propose to submit some evidence. I thought I understood how it worked, but I don’t; here are my notes. Read More
Dave on Often one finds that people argue their solution is more democratic; how does one know? Some political scientists have looked at measuring democracyness, here’s what I have found. Read More
Dave on An unfinished white Paper by Emmanuelle Avril of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. The paper is called, The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party. and was presented to the Political Studies Association 2015 conference, in March so before the election. The abstract states, Read More
