Is democracy an option for the realist?

In Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that the depressingly well-established fact that people are woefully ignorant on politically relevant matters renders democratic ideals mere “fairy tales.” However, this iconoclasm stands in deep tension with the prescriptions they themselves end up offer-ing towards the end of the book, which coincide to a surprising extent with those that have been offered by democrats for decades. This is a problem because, if we take seriously the type of data that Achen and Bartels rely on (and add to)—data that should make us realists in the sense of the book’s title—it is not clear that democracy in any recognizable sense remains an option for the realist

Individual Confidence-Weighting and Group Decision-Making

Group-living species frequently pool individual information so as to reach consensus decisions such as when and where to move, or whether a predator is present. Such opinion-pooling has been demonstrated empirically, and theoretical models have been proposed to explain why group decisions are more reliable than individual decisions. Behavioural ecology theory frequently assumes that all individuals have equal decision-making abilities, but decision theory relaxes this assumption and has been tested in human groups. We summarise relevant theory and argue for its applicability to collective animal decisions. We consider selective pressure on confidence-weighting in groups of related and unrelated individuals. We also consider which species and behaviours may provide evidence of confidence-weighting, paying particular attention to the sophisticated vocal communication of cooperative breeders

Deliberative and epistemic approaches to democracy

Deliberative and epistemic approaches to democracy are two important dimensions of contemporary democratic theory. This chapter studies these dimensions in the emerging ecosystem of civic and political participation tools, and appraises their collective value in a new distinct concept: linked democracy. Linked democracy is the distributed, technology-supported collective decision-making process, where data, information and knowledge are connected and shared by citizens online. Innovation and learning are two key elements of Athenian democracies which can be facilitated by the new digital technologies, and a cross-disciplinary research involving computational scientists and democratic theorists can lead to new theoretical insights of democracy

(Re-)Emergent Orders: Understanding the Negotiation(s) of Rebel Governance

The concept of order is often neglected in the study of conflict – seemingly such a ‘disordering’ process. With the recent increase in the examination of rebel governance however, bringing order back into our understanding of rebel and insurgent groups has much to offer in exploring the everyday politics which connect authorities, rebel movements and the population itself, in a complex mass of intersubjective and power-based interactions and negotiations. Rebels both shape and are shaped by existing forms of order in complex and ongoing ways. This article explores how varying elements interact in the negotiation, framing and enforcement of order and develops an original analytical framework to examine the perpetual negotiations of rebel movements in their attempts to cement their control