Zim Nwokora - Böcker

Democratic politics is expensive. In United States (US) presidential elections, for instance, total spending, including funding by the candidate-supporting political action committees, now exceeds $6.5 billion. Who should bear these costs? Should the state fund political parties and their campaigns, or should most of the funding come from private citizens? In the US, election campaigns are largely funded by private donations from individuals and corporate entities, whereas in Germany, the state is the main funder of electoral politics through subventions to parties. In some other countries, parties have been able to raise most of what they need internally by charging membership dues or, more exceptionally, by relying on a wealthy patron. Across these countries, and in many more, however, there have been numerous scandals and controversies involving political finance, which pose a serious challenge to fundamental democratic principles. Matteo Bonotti and Zim Nwokora analyse the nature of these democratic risks and how they differ across various models of political finance. They argue that political finance rules ought to counterbalance the weaknesses of the party system they are being used alongside. To do so, political finance rules and party systems should be assessed together, in terms of three distinctive normative dimensions-collegiality, systemic voice and systemic accountability-which capture what parties, at their best, can contribute to democratic politics. Money, Parties, and Democracy sets out a framework for evaluating political finance systems so that they can be designed or reformed to better support good governance.

This book analyses constitutional conventions as a powerful but largely neglected framework for studying the law and politics of constitutions.Constitutional conventions are the unwritten rules that inform and circumscribe the political behaviour of individuals, organisations, and a political system. They are as important as the formal legal rules that define written constitutions and shape modern states; yet, unlike formal written rules, conventions have received only limited scholarly attention. This book considers conventions as a lens to theorise and to analyse the institutional dynamics of contemporary constitutions. Interrogating constitutional conventions in a wide variety of contexts – including in Westminster parliamentary systems, in presidential systems, and in non-democratic regimes – the book offers new perspectives for understanding diverse aspects of constitutional politics such as the capacity of conventions to constrain populists, how conventions influence constitutional transformation, how they reflect and reshape core democratic values such as citizenship and constitutional identity, and what they reveal about the character of authoritarian regimes. The book thus demonstrates how the dynamics of conventions shape the very character of constitutions.The book will be of interest to legal theorists, constitutional lawyers, and political scientists.

This volume explores the state of representative democracy on the global stage.It does this against the backdrop of crises such as the USA Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, recent refusals to accept election results in various countries, and attempts to restrict the voting franchise, as well as longer-term trends such as the rise of populism and declining trust in political elites.The first substantive chapter examines representative democracy in theory, history and practice today. Taking the representative model as their point of departure, the subsequent chapters explore a range of themes in relation to this model.The contributions include timely reappraisals of democracy in countries, such as the UK and USA, with old, well-established democratic structures, as well as analyses of the state of democracy in regions such as Africa, Asia and South America, where democracy has had a more chequered history.Across all of its chapters, the book invites readers to rethink fundamental questions about representative democracy: Why is it valuable? How should it be organised? Do steps need to be taken to strengthen representative democracy, and if so, what are those steps?The volume’s target audience – politicians, public servants and interested members of the public – are provided with arguments and evidence to form their own views at a time when the ideals and practices of representative democracy are being challenged around the world, and new ideas and initiatives to revitalise it are being debated and implemented.