Democracy, Law and Governance details the transformation of the modes of governance of contemporary developed democracies and aims to define the conditions required for promoting public interest in their public policy. Firstly, the volume illustrates why a sound theoretical approach to the concept of law results in opening up the theory of law to the debate on governance in the social sciences. Secondly, it reconstructs the underpinnings of recent debate on governance, focusing on the pragmatist turn that has marked efforts to overcome the inadequacies of both the economic and the deliberative approaches. In fulfilling this second goal, it examines the advances yielded by the pragmatist turn as well as its limitations, and concludes by proposing a theoretical approach for dealing with them. This illuminating book applies recent research in both theory of law and theory of governance to deepen the analytic impact of the recent pragmatist revival.

This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or ‘twilight’ of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project ‘The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance’. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

We are taught in civics class that the Constitution provides for three basic branches of government: executive, judicial, and legislative. While the President and Congress as elected by popular vote are representative, can they really reflect accurately the will and sentiment of the populace? Or do money and power dominate everyday politics to the detriment of true self-governance? Is there a way to put &"We the people&" back into government? Ethan Leib thinks there is and offers this blueprint for a fourth branch of government as a way of giving the people a voice of their own. While drawing on the rich theoretical literature about deliberative democracy, Leib concentrates on designing an institutional scheme for embedding deliberation in the practice of American democratic government. At the heart of his scheme is a process for the adjudication of issues of public policy by assemblies of randomly selected citizens convened to debate and vote on the issues, resulting in the enactment of laws subject both to judicial review and to possible veto by the executive and legislative branches. The &"popular&" branch would fulfill a purpose similar to the ballot initiative and referendum but avoid the shortcomings associated with those forms of direct democracy. Leib takes special pains to show how this new branch would be integrated with the already existing governmental and political institutions of our society, including administrative agencies and political parties, and would thus complement rather than supplant them.

This book is a collection of contributions by leading scholars on theoretical and contemporary problems of militant democracy. The term 'militant democracy' was first coined in 1937. In a militant democracy preventive measures are aimed, at least in practice, at restricting people who would openly contest and challenge democratic institutions and fundamental preconditions of democracy like secularism - even though such persons act within the existing limits of, and rely on the rights offered by, democracy. In the shadow of the current wars on terrorism, which can also involve rights restrictions, the overlapping though distinct problem of militant democracy seems to be lost, notwithstanding its importance for emerging and established democracies. This volume will be of particular significance outside the German-speaking world, since the bulk of the relevant literature on militant democracy is in the German language. The book is of interest to academics in the field of law, political studies and constitutionalism.

"Federalism, defined generally as a collection of self-governing regions under a central government, is widely viewed as a sensible choice of polity both for emerging democracies and for established states. But while federal institutions are positively correlated with valued economic, democratic, and justice outcomes, ultimately it is unclear how they are connected and which cause which. In Democratic Federalism, Robert Inman and Daniel Rubinfeld explore how federalism works and propose concrete and proven policy guidance on how federalist policies can be designed and implemented successfully. The authors define federalism according to three parameters: how much federal revenue comes through local governmental bodies, the number of local governmental bodies, and the extent to which these local bodies are represented federally. In applying these parameters to economic concepts and theory, Inman and Rubinfeld explain how federalism works in a way meant to engage scholars in political science and sociology and policymakers drafting regulation in federalist governments. The book offers applicable ideas and comparative case studies on how to assess potential policies and how to actually design federalist institutions from scratch. Both authors have real experience with both, most notably in their work advising the South African government on how to build a federalist democracy. This book will be an essential guide to understanding and applying federalist concepts and principles"--

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.

This book addresses the question of why governments sometimes follow the law and other times choose to evade the law. The traditional answer of jurists has been that laws have an autonomous causal efficacy: law rules when actions follow anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience, obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this conception, the authors defend a positive interpretation where the rule of law results from the strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever resources they can muster: only when these actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to la, does law rule. What distinguishes 'rule-of-law' as an institutional equilibrium from 'rule-by-law' is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use institutions to promote their interest.