CONTENTS: Introduction ................................................................................................................5 PART I. CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES FOR DEMOCRACIES Andrei Tsygankov 1. The Crisis of Democracy and the Need for State ................................ 22 Anastasia Bordovskikh and Raphael Boussier 2. Decision-Making Crisis in Contemporary Democracies ................. 38 John Dunn 3. Democracy and Good Government: Geographical and Historical Disparities in Perspective and the Quality of Political Judgment ........................................................................................... 66 Karl A. Schachtschneider 4. Peace Through Democracy ........................................................................... 84 Piotr Dutkiewicz 5. Democracy’s Unlikely Supporters............................................................108 PART II. NATIONAL DEMOCRACIES Alasdair Roberts 6. How American Democracy Learns From Crisis .................................124 Pavlos Eleftheriadis 7. Democratic Representation and Accountability in the European Union ......................................................................................154 4 Ivan Blot 8. The Legislative Process in France: Democracy or Oligarchy? ..................................................................................178 Eiríkur Bergmann 9. Citizen’s Assemblies in Response to Crisis of Democratic Representation ....................................................194 Subrata K. Mitra 10. Democracy Consolidation and Multi-level Governance in Transitional Societies: Some General Lessons of the Indian Case ................................................219 Arthur Ituassu 11. Liberty and Social Justice: Democracy and Public Benefits in Brazil and Latin America ...............................................................................................242 Valentina Fedotova 12. Modernization and Democratic Transit: Lessons and Perspectives in Russia .............................................................261 Mattias Kumm 13. Liberal Constitutional Democracy 25 years after the End of the Cold War ......................................................275 INTRODUCTION Forty years ago the Trilateral commission consisting of the most prominent scientists of the time – Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki – published a report entitled “The Crisis of Democra- cy: On the Governability of Democracies”. The aim they set out to achieve was strengthening of the foundations of democratic institutions, but the conclusions the authors came to were truly groundbreaking: thus, S. Huntington points out all regimes under re- search, especially in the United States, see the weakening of authority of central government institutions due to “the excess of attention to democ- racy”. Compared to 1970s, when the discussion of this topic just started, the present level of trust of Western countries’ citizens to the democrat- ically elected authorities has decreased dramatically. “The level of anger with politicians and institutions of government is much higher than it used to be in 1975”, says political scientist Fareed Zakaria in his article on the problems of democracy in Foreign affairs magazine1. According to polls re- sults, in 1964 76% of American citizens reported that they trust their gov- ernment in most cases. By 2010 this number has dropped to 19%. 1 Zakaria, F. (2013, January/February Can America Be fixed? The New Crisis of Democracy. Foreign affairs 6 Introduction Subsequently the concept of democracy has gone through a number of attempts of restoration and adaptation to the changing conditions, the world has faced a few waves of democratization, however, with the ris- ing reach of democratization the list of “imperfections”, “extremes” and “paradoxes” of democracy has only been expanding. Export of democracy to the poorest and post-crisis nations, which triggered the appearance of a range of financial-aid-dependent states with elites imitating reforms in exchange for persona grata status with- in global integration blocks, deserves special attention. While there are quite few successful examples of transition to democracy, this process automatically spares the states undergoing the process of democrati- zation from the need to develop independently: there are formulas of democratic reforms simplified to the set of success-granting mottos and standardized procedures. Russia in 1990s could serve as an example of the catastrophic results of using such ready-made approaches. Despite the fact that the waves of democratization in XX century have proved the failure of linear dependency between the level of development of democratic institutions and the population’s quality of life, Western countries continue convincing the whole world (and themselves as well) that all counties are either democratic or non-democratic. And the lat- ter – disregarding of their population intentions – are democracies too but in the “hybrid” form just being at varying distances from becoming real democracies. Neither successful examples of non-democratic devel- opment of Singapore and China nor the economic failures of oldest de- mocracies such as India convince the apologists of total democratization. More and more often Western scientists are calling for the return to traditional constructive values and reevaluation of the concept of de- mocracy itself, authentic historical study of which has just recently been Introduction 7 started by social sciences. The rising tension in Western countries is pushing on elites to search for the alternatives in filling in the value vac- uum, resulting from the sacralization of democracy. There are more and more cases when the power in democratic states is determined not by the majority but by separate groups with quite narrow interests – i.e. oligarchs, coalition of minorities, elite that is detached from the citizens. The theorists of democracy are pointing out the decrease in the level of political involvement including the level of voting turnout that is re- ported almost in all democratic states. Today the previous wide-spread politization of the society is substituted by the apathy of big groups of citizens that are unable to satisfy their needs through political partici- pation with the subsequent rise of influence of minorities that preserved the taste for politics.2 Citizens of the US and Europe are less and less interested in taking part in the political process. The voting turnout is dropping down: since the beginning of 1980s it has decreased on aver- age by 10% in European countries3. While the turnout for the presiden- tial elections has been quite stable, journalists and experts are reporting dramatic decrease of interest in the elections of representatives in the Congress. In 2014 the historical minimum of election turnout since 1918 was registered – 33,24% of voters, which lead to a new wave of discus- sions in the country.4 Such a situation allowed Matthew Flinders, professor in political studies from University of Sheffield, to argue the existence in the West of the ma- 2 Democracy on the edge. Populism and Protest. A research paper produced for the BBC’s Democracy day. (2015, January). The Economist Intelligence Unit.. 3 Delwit, P. (2013) The End of Voters in Europe? Electoral Turnout in Europe since WWII. Open Journal of Political Science, 3, 44–52. 4 Voter turnout data for United States (1946–2014). International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). Источник — http://www.idea.int/ (01.04.2015). 8 Introduction jority who is interested in the manifestation of their will and have enough political literacy to identify the course of development for their countries.5 Events of the last decade – failure of “young democracies” in Africa and at the Middle East, lasting economic crisis, the rise of populism in Europe – have undermined the trust in effectiveness of democratic re- gimes and their ability to give an adequate response to the complex chal- lenges of our time ranging from economic issues to immigration policy. Even institutions which aim to promote democracy overseas are stat- ing: the number of purely democratic states has been constantly decreas- ing during last decades.6 Electoral success of new parties at the elections in some countries and at the last elections to the European Parliament in 2014 turned them into the pan-European phenomenon. The political tension on such parties caused by the EU institutions before the elections in the form of repots on the danger of populist movements had not led to the desired results – euros- ceptics have got a wide representation in the current European Parliament. Traditional parties faced a tough issue of how to oppose daring political “newcomers” that has become dangerous competitors? As a result, recently in several European countries fight with populists has been lead by means of legislative or even police measures. Limitation of democracy as a means of protecting democracy has taken place in Spain, Sweden and Germany. In their attempt to understand the reasons behind the failures of “young democracies” the theorists from the Economist analytical unit are introducing a range of new parameters in their latest global “Democ- racy index” that are identifying the essence of democratic regime and 5 Flinders, M. Low voter turnout is clearly a problem, but a much greater worry is the growing inequality of that turnout. London School of Economics Blog, опубликовано http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/look-