Challenges to Democracy Political Studies Association Yearbook Series

Titles include: Keith Dowding, James Hughes and Helen Margetts (editors) CHALLENGES TO DEMOCRACY Ideas, Involvement and Institutions Chris Pierson and Simon Tormey (editors) POLITICS AT THE EDGE The PSA Yearbook 1999

Political Studies Association Yearbook Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-91373-4 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Challenges to Democracy Ideas, Involvement and Institutions

The PSA Yearbook 2000

Edited by

Keith Dowding Professor of Political Science London School of Economics James Hughes Senior Lecturer in Comparative Economics London School of Economics and Helen Margetts Professor of Political Science Director, School of Public Policy University College London

in association with Political Studies Association © Political Studies Association 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-333-78982-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 978-1-349-41862-6 ISBN 978-1-4039-4017-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4039-4017-9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Challenges to democracy : ideas, involvement, and institutions : the PSA yearbook 2000 / edited by Keith Dowding, James Hughes, and Helen Margetts. p. cm. — (Political Studies Association yearbook series ; 2000) Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Democracy. I. Dowding, Keith M. II. Hughes, James, 1955– III. Margetts, Helen. IV. Series. JC423 .C5124 2001 306.2—dc21 2001021881

10987654321 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 Contents

Notes on the Contributors vii

Introduction xi

PART I CHALLENGES FOR DEMOCRACY: EQUALITY AND SATISFACTION

1 Political Equality in the Coming Century 3 Robert A. Dahl

2 Levelling Down 18 Jonathan Wolff

3 The Political Economy of Human Happiness 33 Benjamin Radcliff

4 Freedom and the Achievement of Happiness 46 Jan Ott

PART II CHALLENGES FROM SOCIETY: CHANGING PATTERNS OF POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

5 Is There a Crisis of Democracy in Great Britain? Turnout at General Elections Reconsidered 61 Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie

6 Social Capital, Civic Literacy and Political Participation: Explaining Differences in Voter Turnout 81 Henry Milner

7 A Virtuous Circle? The Impact of Political Communications in Post-Industrial Democracies 100 Pippa Norris

8 Hacktivism: Direct Action on the Electronic Flows of Information Societies 118 Tim Jordan

9 Deliberative Democracy and Referendums 131 John Parkinson

v vi Contents

10 Creating Spaces of Deliberation in Barcelona: It’s Good to Talk? 153 Georgina Blakeley

PART III CHALLENGES FROM THE STATE: CHANGING INSTITUTIONS

11 External Inﬂuences on Party Development and Transnational Party Cooperation: The Case of Post-Communist Europe 169 Geoffrey Pridham

12 Promoting Parties and Party Systems in New Democracies: Is There Anything the ‘International Community’ Can Do? 188 Peter Burnell

13 Regulatory Accountability: Towards a Single Citizen-Consumer Model? 205 Martin Lodge

14 E-governance: Weber’s Revenge? 220 Perri 6

15 Decentralization and Development: The New Panacea 237 Elinor Ostrom

Index 257 Notes on the Contributors

Georgina Blakeley is currently Lecturer in Politics at the University of Huddersﬁeld. She has recently submitted her doctoral thesis on participation and democracy in Spain. She has published articles on democracy and civil society in Spain and Chile as well as on aspects of Spanish politics more generally.

Peter Burnell is a Professor of Politics at the University of Warwick. His inter- ests include democratization, the political economy of international assistance and politics in Zambia. He is joint founding editor of the journal Democratization.

Robert A. Dahl is Sterling Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at Yale University and the author of numerous books on democracy, including A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956), Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (1961), Democracy and Its Critics (1989), and On Democracy (1998).

Keith Dowding is Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. He has published widely in political theory, public administration and urban politics. His books include Rational Choice and Political Power, The Civil Service, Power and he has co-edited Preferences, Institutions and Rational Choice. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Theoretical Politics.

James Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics. He is the author of two monographs and numerous journal articles on Russian history and politics. His current research projects include developments in post-Soviet Russian federalism and a comparative study of the role of local elites in transition in Central and Eastern Europe.

Ron Johnston is a Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. He has published widely on various aspects of electoral studies; the most recent work (co-authored with Charles Pattie, Danny Dorling and David Rossiter) is From Votes to Seats: the UK’s Electoral System in Operation since 1950 (Manchester University Press, 2001).

Tim Jordan is a lecturer in Sociology at the Open University. He is the author of Cyberpower: the Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet (London:

vii viii Notes on the Contributors

Routledge) and co-editor of Storming the Millennium: the New Politics of Change (London: Lawrence & Wishart). He has published work about on-line social movements, hackers and social theory, as well as working on recent popular protests and social movements. E-mail: [email protected]

Martin Lodge is Lecturer in Public Policy in the School of Public Policy, Economics and Law at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown. His research focuses on comparative regulation, in particular railway regulation, comparative public administration and German and EU public policy.

Helen Margetts is Professor of Political Science and Director of the School of Public Policy, University College London. She is the author of Information Technology in Government: Britain and America (Routledge) and has published widely on electoral systems, the relationship between the state and the Internet and other information technologies, administrative reform and political participation.

Henry Milner is a political scientist afﬁliated with Laval University in Canada and the University of Umea in Sweden. He is co-editor of Inroads, a Canadian journal of opinion and policy, and has published a number of books on Scandinavian and Canadian politics. His most recent book is Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work, University Press of New England, 2001.

Pippa Norris is Associate Director (Research) of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, and Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The author or editor of two dozen books, her latest are A Virtuous Circle: Political Communication in Postindustrial Societies (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet in Democratic Societies (Cambridge University Press, 2001). More details about research and publications can be found at pippanorris.com.

Elinor Ostrom is Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change at Indiana University. Her major area of study is institutional analysis. She is currently studying with a network of colleagues the ways in which government, private, and common property affect user incentives and forest conditions.

Jan Ott is carrying out PhD research into freedom and happiness at Erasmus University, with Ruut Veenhoven. He previously studied sociology and law, Notes on the Contributors ix specializing in development problems, social economic policies, labour relations and government administration, and acting as a student-assistant in social psychology. Since 1984 he has been a policy adviser in labour relations for the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

John Parkinson is a doctoral student in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, previously at Melbourne University. He specializes in democratic theory and public policy, especially popular participation in decision-making. His current research examines legitimacy problems of deliberative designs.

Charles Pattie is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Shefﬁeld. In collaboration with Ron Johnston he has published widely on various aspects of electoral geography. He is currently co-editor, with Pat Seyd, of an ESRC-funded project into citizenship and political participation in Great Britain.

Geoffrey Pridham is Professor of European Politics and Director of the Centre for Mediterranean Studies (CMS) at the University of Bristol. He has published widely on problems of post-authoritarian democratization in Southern Europe and, more recently, in Central and Eastern Europe. Among his publications may be counted ‘Democratization in Eastern Europe’, with Tatu Vanhanen (Routledge, 1994); ‘Stabilising Fragile Democracies: Comparing New Party Systems in Southern and Eastern Europe’, with Paul Lewis (Routledge, 1996); ‘Experimenting with Democracy: Regime Change in the Balkans’, with Tom Gallagher (Routledge, 2000); and, ‘The Dynamics of Democratization: A Comparative Approach’ (Continuum, 2000). He is now working on a project looking at EU enlargement and domestic politics in ﬁve post-Communist states with particular attention to Slovakia.

Benjamin Radcliff is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. His present research agenda focuses on the links between mass politics, governmental policies, and quality of life. Radcliff’s articles have appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and a variety of other journals. E-mail: [email protected]

Perri 6 is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Government at the University of Strathclyde. His most recent books include Governing in the Round: Strategies for Holistic Government (with D. Leat, K. Seltzer and G. Stoker, 1999), Morals for Robots and Cyborgs: Ethics, Society and Public Policy in the Age of Autonomous Intelligent Machines (1999), The Future of Privacy (2 vols, 1998), x Notes on the Contributors

Holistic Government (1997) and The Contract Culture in Public Services (ed. with J. Kendall, 1997). He is currently ﬁnishing a new book on ‘joined-up’ government and research on e-governance.

Jonathan Wolff is Professor of Philosophy at University College London (UCL). He is the author of Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991) and An Introduction to Political Philosophy (1996). Introduction

The twentieth century was the century of democracy. As Robert Dahl points out in his essay in this collection, at the beginning of the twentieth century only eight nations had the basic institutions of representative democracy and only one of those had female suffrage. By the end of the century universal suffrage existed in 85 nations which together include nearly 60 per cent of the world’s population. The century saw the break-up of the great European empires; the rise and fall of fascism in Europe; the rise and fall of communism in Europe; newly emerging democracies in Latin America as their authoritarian and dictatorial regimes started to crumble; and democracy beginning to emerge in South-East Asia. There is a long way to go for fully developed democracies around the world, and there are many problems emerging for newly formed democracies in East and Central Europe, and continuing problems in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. We must also not be complacent in Britain, whose democracy may be old but is showing signs of tiredness, with a devastated local government system, great swathes of unelected bodies with enormous public powers, an unelected upper chamber, and falling turnout at all levels of elections. The democratic deﬁcit in the European Union is not being addressed as a federal state is carved out without the kind of constitutional assembly which saw the start of the US march towards democracy. The US also has democratic problems of its own, with low levels of participation, high levels of cynicism and, like the UK, increasing levels of inequality. Each chapter in this book is concerned with the challenges facing us as we enter a new century. They examine ideas about democracy, new ways of involving citizens in government and the institutions which form democracy’s core. The book is divided into three parts. The ﬁrst – ‘Challenges for Democracy: Equality and Satisfaction’ – is concerned with the challenges posed for democracy by inequality and providing for the happiness of citizens. Inequality and democracy are inextricably linked. The very basis of democratic thought is one person one vote – equality in franchise. But liberty is also a fundamental component of a democratic system; liberty and equality often clash. State institutions which can help to overcome great inequalities are also those which cut across economic and personal freedoms. One of the key questions of this section is the level of satisfaction provided under different types of democracy – those which provide redistribution and strong welfare systems and those which concentrate upon economic freedom. The second part – ‘Challenges from Society: Changing Patterns of Political

xi xii Introduction

Involvement’ looks at the participation of citizens in a democracy from various standpoints – from falling turnout in mature democracies, through the use of referendums and deliberative devices, to new forms of participation and protest using the Internet and new technologies. Can citizens truly be involved in democratic decision-making? Is falling turnout a result of alien- ation from representative systems where voters feel powerless? Can more direct forms of democratic decision-making such as referendums provide a genuine channel which enhances democracy? Can the ideas of those arguing for more deliberative forms of democracy actually work in practice? All these questions are addressed in this part. Institutional change in both emergent and established liberal democracies is a further challenge to democracy – yet institutional development is also nec- essary to keep pace with a changing world. These concurrent challenges are covered in the final part of the book – ‘Challenges from the State: Changing Institutions’. The new democracies of Eastern and Central Europe are strug- gling to produce party systems recognizable to Western ideas of democracy. Can the West help in the production of competitive party systems? Can the state find new ways of regulating itself and harness new technologies to aid this process? Should the state intervene in local affairs to enforce new participatory modes or should it allow groups to find their own ways of working together and regulating their life?

Challenges for democracy: equality and satisfaction

How much equality is required for a fully developed democratic system is a fundamental issue for democracy. It is an issue which Robert Dahl picks up in the essay which opens this volume. Dahl notes the spread of democracy and equality during the twentieth century. Quoting Tocqueville’s account of the spread of equality and democracy throughout the past 800 years, Dahl shows how these values have increased during the last century. Dahl argues, contra Tocqueville, that there is an inexorable rise in rights and liberties under democracy, and notes how stable mature democracies have become. However, that is not to say that there are not challenges facing democracy in the new century. While the advanced welfare democracies of the late twentieth century started to bring about greater equality, these advances have been reversed in the last twenty years. But Dahl argues that a strong measure of equality is required for a well-functioning democracy. One challenge is that provided by an economic order of market capitalism and the problems of system effectiveness with high levels of citizen participation. He also sees the challenges to liberty, equality and democracy posed by global- ization, and the challenges we face in making all organizations in society democratic. Introduction xiii

Jonathan Wolff takes up an issue that has long troubled egalitarians. Critics of egalitarianism often claim that the attempt to make people equal in the end makes all worse off. Modern egalitarians are agreed that they do not oppose Pareto improvements, that is they do not oppose making one person better off as long as no one else is thereby made worse off. In Wolff’s terms modern egalitarians all oppose ‘levelling down’. Wolff argues that there are specific circumstances where egalitarians should not oppose levelling down. These circumstances arise in cases where the principle of equality is symbolic of the equality of different people, even where someone else’s gain is not specifically another’s loss. Wolff’s argument suggests that there may be a trade-off between maximizing satisfaction in a democratic society, and promoting equality. Both Benjamin Radcliff and Jan Ott look at public satisfaction levels in both mature and emerging democracies in relationship to equality and liberty. They both suggest that the nature of democracy and democratic competition may have dramatic effects on satisfaction levels within nations. Both studies utilize empirical evidence on citizens’ stated preferences over their general levels of satisfaction or ‘happiness’. Radcliff uses both pooled time series data from the Eurobarometer of member states of the EU, and cross-sectional data from a wider group of industrialized nations from the World Values Study. Both data sets suggest that higher levels of welfare spending by the state increase overall satisfaction levels. When looking at party control he also finds that the longer a left-wing party is in control the happier the citizens claim to be. This evidence is entirely on stated preferences, and of course citizens do vote out left-wing governments and vote in right-wing ones. It does not show that citizens are ‘objectively’ better off in high welfare spending regimes and under left-wing governments, but people do report that they are more satisfied. This challenges a key component of those who argue that democracy must first and foremost protect individual liberties. Jan Ott’s chapter complements Radcliff’s essay. Ott’s data are from a broader set of nations and includes both developed and developing nations. Using data from a number of sources, he examines the relationship between satisfaction and different types of freedom. He shows that democracy and democratic values are correlated with satisfaction levels. He finds significant correlations between ‘happiness’ and sets of indicators from economic, political and press freedom. However, he finds a difference between rich and poor nations. The correlation between economic freedom and satisfaction holds across the full set, but political freedom and press freedom is correlated with satisfaction levels only in relatively rich nations. In poorer nations, satisfaction is higher where government consumption is low, there are lower levels of redistribution, fewer state-owned enterprises and a generally lower level of state intervention in the market. It may be that government intervention dampens xiv Introduction market behaviour and expectations, and in poor nations satisfaction is correlated with higher expectations about a better life in the future established by a more vibrant economy. Transfers will be relatively low, and poor nations cannot afford the welfare benefits to provide proper social insurance. However, in richer nations, people appreciate the social insurance of strong state welfare programmes even if they dampen the market slightly. Here the trade-off is worth it. Or, to put it in a nutshell, only the rich can afford the welfare state.

Challenges from society: changing patterns of political involvement

If democracy rests on the key principles of popular control and political equality, then a major challenge must be securing the continued willingness of individual citizens to be involved in the project. Liberal democracies in the twenty-first century must maintain such involvement in the face of changing patterns of political participation. The twentieth century was the age of the election – the century which started with mass enfranchisement and ended, in Britain at least, with concerns over citizens’ enthusiasm for using their vote and participating in political institutions or political decision-making. Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie explore one such concern, examining patterns of turnout in elections in the last fifty years of the twentieth century, asking whether the phenomenon of low voter turnout is really new, or whether it reflects patterns that have existed since the 1950s. They conclude the latter, finding a trendless fluctuation from 1959 around an average turnout of 75 per cent. Voters rationally choose to vote when they think there will be a close outcome and 1997 reflected the expectation of a clear victory for Labour. This rationality does not appear to extend to marginality at constituency level, where the dominant party in a constituency (Labour voters have traditionally been more difficult to mobilize) and the age of voters (younger voters have always been less willing to vote) seem to remain the significant factors. Thus at the national level, outcomes reflect in part the electoral system used – if the outcome is a foregone conclusion, more people abstain. Henry Milner examines voter turnout across OECD countries through the lens of social capital, defined by Robert Putnam as features of social life – net- works, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together to pursue shared objectives. He observes that the burgeoning debate on the relevance of social capital has marginalized the most basic expression of democratic citizenship: voting. Contrary to the arguments of the social capitalists, Milner finds little basis for the presumption that people in high trust societies or those with high levels of organizational participation vote in national or local elections more than do those in low trust ones. He introduces the concept of ‘civic lit- Introduction xv eracy’ to explain the absence of a relationship between local voting turnout and the standard indicators of social capital, arguing that the link between social capital and political participation passes through political knowledge, measured through literacy levels and newspaper circulation, representing the ‘demand’ side of civic literacy, while the choice of electoral system (propor- tional or otherwise) again emerges as a key factor on the ‘supply’ side. Pippa Norris and Tim Jordan investigate the reaction of citizens to the major new forums for political activity to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century: the mass media and, more recently, the Internet. Pippa Norris outlines the claims and counterclaims that have been made for ‘the media malaise’, the argument that the news media is to be blamed for growing public disengagement and mistrust of government. She argues that contrary to what authors such as Putnam have claimed, use of the news media is positively associated with a wide range of indicators of political knowledge, trust and mobilization – people who watch more TV news, read more news- papers, surf the net are more knowledgeable, trusting of government and par- ticipate more. She identifies a ‘virtuous circle’ where the news media serve to ‘activate the active’, yet have less power to reinforce the disengagement of the disengaged. Tim Jordan looks at the Internet and more radical forms of participation, showing how individuals undertaking a kind of technological apoliti- cal participation increasingly show off their technological skills by breaking into the computer systems of governments and large corporations. These ‘hacktivists’ are developing connections with radical social movements (eco- logical, animal rights and anti-capitalist) that have existed since the 1960s to form a new electronic direct action movement. Thus technological game playing in the electronic nervous systems of liberal democracies becomes political action, with fundamental implications for the future of popular protest. Two chapters look at new ways of involving citizens in decision-making: direct and deliberative forms of democracy. John Parkinson looks at the potential of referendums to embody the principles of popular control and political equality and thereby to support ‘direct’ democracy in the twenty-first century by examining a series of referendums and petitions in Switzerland since the late 1960s. He questions the openness of this democratic device; participation rates are low (especially among younger, liberal, lower income and less educated members of society); initiating referendums is costly; information is distorted by the media; citizenship is hard to obtain and foreigners are excluded. He concludes from the Swiss experience that while referendums may appear deliberative in isolation, their social and institutional setting introduces fundamental distortions which make genuine deliberation highly unlikely: ‘issues come pre-framed, wielding cultural categories in ways which are not readily open to challenge.’ Georgina Blakeley examines a form of xvi Introduction deliberative democracy, using examples from a participatory experiment carried out in Barcelona in the 1980s and 1990s, where a series of sectoral and territorial advisory councils were used to facilitate dialogue and interaction between the associational fabric of the city and the local council. The experiment illustrates the dangers of ‘top-down’ democratic initiatives, where a key objective is the securing of cooperation and the support of associations and, arguably, too many functions are loaded onto one democratic device. Deliberative democracy does not prove itself as a model of democracy, but simply an element within a wider theoretical framework. Wherever disagree- ment appears to be an insurmountable barrier to deliberation, participants resort to other more effective mechanisms to influence public administration. And deliberative democracy does not have the means to address the key ques- tion of how people can be encouraged to deliberate in the first place, even in Barcelona where there was a political will to facilitate spaces of deliberation and a historical tradition of associational activity.

Challenges from the state: changing institutions

Other challenges to democracy come from changes in the shape of the state and political institutions, particularly given the constant battle of newly emergent liberal democracies to stabilize their political systems. Key to such a process must be the institution of the political party, also an invention of the twentieth century. Geoffrey Pridham investigates the influence of transnational party cooperation between member states of the European Union and new democracies on party development in post-communist Europe, chal- lenging the assumption that party development is essentially a concern of domestic political arenas. He finds that the pattern in the 1990s has been for West European party-political habits to imprint themselves on parties from countries across Central and Eastern Europe. The coming years seem likely to see this pattern of influences developing into more of a two-way process, especially when some of these countries join the European Union, to the point where it might be called a process of Europeanization. Peter Burnell outlines the challenge of weakly institutionalized party systems to ‘third wave’ democracies and investigates the options for the international community in terms of political reform and help with party-building and electoral competition. Democratic assistance ranges from the ‘soft end’ of transfer of resources to incentives, inducements and rewards, which can be applied to individual parties or the party system as a whole – and can be effective or non-effective in democratic terms. Other democratic challenges coming from the state are the legacy of the fast- moving public management change of the last twenty years of the twentieth Introduction xvii century. Martin Lodge looks at the impact of privatization on the contempor- ary state, investigating the democratic implications of the privatization and subsequent regulation of utilities across Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Germany and New Zealand. Rather than a uniform model of the so-called regulatory state, he finds evidence of the persistence of diversity with varying use of choice, voice, information and representation as the key tools of national regulatory models. Perri 6 looks at another key trend – the widespread use of information and communication technologies in the policy-making process (e-governance) and the extent to which such technologies are used to reinforce Weberian rationality. His conclusion is that decision-makers shape technology to pre-existent ends, and that its use introduces new rituals and symbols into the policy toolkit, rather than new methods of bureaucratic control. In the concluding chapter, Elinor Ostrom identifies institutions as both the key and the ultimate challenge to successful decentralization in developing countries, in which ‘developed countries’ assist ‘developing’ countries in the process of economic and political development by providing resources for local initiatives. Applying common pool arguments to natural resource systems such as fishery, forestry and irrigation, Ostrom concludes that decentralization requires systems where citizens are able to organize not just one but multiple governing authorities at differing scales, where each unit exercises considerable independence to make and enforce rules within a circumscribed scope of authority for a specified geographical area. Development of effective institutions is a process that takes time and depends upon problem-specific factors. The process of institutional development cannot be jump-started through sub- stantial development assistance – but requires a solid theoretical understanding of institutional development. Ostrom’s ‘polycentric’ political systems may look messy and chaotic – but they outperform neat hierarchies of unified governmental layers. Learning better how to analyse such complex systems stands out as the challenge for political science in the twenty-first century. Her chapter highlights the grave dangers of imposing systems on polities, and warns that decentralization, any more than centralization, should not be seen as the new panacea to solve collective action problems.

All of the essays in this book were presented at the 50th Anniversary Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association in London, 10–13 April 2000. The chapters by Robert Dahl and Elinor Ostrom were plenary addresses and we were particularly pleased to be able to include them in this collection. The other chapters were chosen from among the ﬁve hundred plus papers given at that conference. The choice of these papers was based both on their quality and the extent to which they ﬁt the theme of the conference and of this book: Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century. xviii Introduction

We would like to thank everyone who helped to make the conference such a success, particularly the organizing team of Razmik Panoussian, Jurgen de- Wispelaere (Web Master) and Kennedy Stewart (Graduate Conference Convenor).

Keith Dowding James Hughes Helen Margetts