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This thesis examines the group of political advisors within the government offices of a right-wing and left-wing government, showing differences between the two in terms of recruitment. The political advisors, among many roles both inside and outside the government offices, fall under the category of policy professionals. The policy professionals are defined as a social group employed without being elected, but perhaps capable of affecting policies. With collected resumes of policy professionals inside the government offices, the backgrounds of the policy professionals are examined showing differences in the qualities valued most in recruitment between the two governments selected for the thesis. The political profiles ‘media-talent’ and ‘party democrat’ show what type of government metamorphosis is present on the basis of Bernard Manin’s theory of the representative democratic form of government. The results showed a majority of policy professionals belong to the party democratic profile representing Bernard Manin’s second metamorphosis. The growing group of media-talent profiles within both governments however show, that the metamorphosis might be in a state of change, moving towards the public democracy.

Venezuela experienced one of the most dramatic political transformations of the twentieth century. After initially developing a system of representative democracy hailed among the most resilient in the Western Hemisphere in the 1950s, the country endured wave after wave of economic turmoil until, in 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected to the office of the Venezuelan presidency, fundamentally altering the governmental structure of the country and contributing to the desperate economic conditions Venezuela finds itself in today. This thesis attempts to explain the societal factors that led to Chávez’s election through an examination of Venezuelan economic policy in the final decades of the twentieth century. By charting the attempts made by specific Venezuelan political actors to address the unique conditions and dilemmas generated by the country’s largely oil-based economy during this period, it is argued that the economic policies enacted by Venezuela’s representative democracy systematically failed to address the needs and concerns of the country’s poor and working classes. As a result, political disillusionment among these social groups became increasingly more pervasive, finally reaching its full expression in the election of Chávez as an outsider candidate pledging to overhaul the Venezuelan political system in favor of poor and working class social sectors. Moreover, this text attempts to situate Chávez’s election as the result of a broader trend of inadequate economic policy beyond the commonly examined neoliberal reforms of the 1990s and ultimately serves to caution against an economic worldview that overlooks potential repercussions for society’s most vulnerable sectors.

This thesis is a study of Parties as an outflow of societal changes where the aim has been to find out how parties are affected by societal changes and how they justify to new party formation. This is done by using a theory called Parties as an outflow of societal changes which is a theory developed by Swedish researchers in Political Science. To confirm the theory it is necessary to do an argumentation analysis of one external developed party’s electoral program. In this case the party selected is Feminist Initiative which brings a different view on how the society of Sweden should look like. Selected parts of the argumentative analysis will be examined with the purpose to give a perspective on how Feminist Initiative values the changes in society and how they describe their role as a new party. The main question of this study is; Are new parties an outflow of societal changes? The basic arguments includes that along with societal changes in Western Europe also changes the view of a representative democracy in which political parties play a central role. It is clear that societies have changed in different ways with the rampage of the globalization. Media’s role in the political realm has also increased and influences more in society. In the case of Sweden political parties have raised with different ideals, goals and visions of how Swedish society should look like. The result should confirm the thesis that changes in society contributes to party formation.

Abstract Recently, The ¡uDigital Revolution¡vchanges the store of the knowledge. The traditional conveyance of knowledge, book, have been gradually replaced by store equipments that have immense storage. Then, the internet totally changes information of the exchange. For the reason, the new storage technology and the specialization of the internet make the application and management of information a new landmark. The provision and exchange of public information are the essential activities in a democratic regime. But local study mostly focus on the administration, little study on legislative Yuan. Hence, this paper is intended to investigate representative behavior of Taiwan¡¦s legislators. Legislators are the representative of constituency. They are not only responsible for constituency, but need to monitor administration, law-making. Exchange of information is of utmost significance. The appearance of internet has positive affect on representative behavior of legislators, this paper discuss all of topics. Finally, after the seventh phrase of constitutional reform, the number of seats that legislators have reduce to half in th legislature. In addition, the legislators suffer the pressure of a single-constituency, two ballot system. I believe that legislators¡¦ paying more attention to the access the internet helps improve the quality of the activating in constituencies. I expect that the results of this study may increase the legislature revolution.

Direct democracy in the 21st century: challenges and pitfalls Abstract The thesis deals with the position of direct democracy in the 21st century, what are its advantages and disadvantages and problem areas. Before that, it briefly presents why such strong voices calling for direct democracy have been heard in recent years. The first part of the thesis describes the emergence of representative democracy and how this process was influenced by opinions on direct democracy. Furthermore, the reasons for the existence of representative democracy are outlined and the theory behind it is briefly introduced. In its second part, the thesis discusses, in greater detail, the present of representative democracy, what are its advantages and disadvantages and what problems it faces, which quite possibly threaten its very existence. In this part the thesis is based, among other things, on sociological findings, especially in Czech society. These problems largely explain frequent considerations about the implementation of direct democracy. The third part turns its attention to direct democracy exclusively and describes its history, more precisely, important passages from it. It also describes the theoretical foundations of direct democracy, in which the defense of direct democracy by its promoters is hidden to some extent....

Internet and social media are technologies that have increased in recent times, does it have potential for solving problems of democracy? Some researchers claim that the new technology brings new forms of communication and eases information gathering. While others believe that the technology leads to an individualization, which in turn weakens democracy. The aim of this study is to recognize causes and consequences of the Swedish citizens use of social media in the representative democracy.To achieve the purpose two tasks will be performed. The first one will be an analytical model to test two hypotheses about how the use of social media affects the individuals support for representative democracy. Second, empirical analyzes of the data from a national survey will be carried out to test the two hypotheses, the data is conducted through a statistical analysis. Based on this, an overall research question is formulated which reads: How does the individual's use of social media effect their support to representative democracy?The analyses reveals that the citizen’s use of social media has raised high expectations of vitalization and change of the representative democracy. This indicates that new technologies may reshape the political system and form new ways of political participation that strengthens democracy.

Representative democracy at the European level This thesis deals with representative democracy, as one of the fundamental principles underpinning the organisation of states or, as the case may be, interstate-type entities. At the European level, this principle is embodied by the European Parliament and the national parliaments of the Member States whose functions and competences complement each other. In the context of the role of the European Parliament the fundamental question concerns direct elections as an instrument of political legitimacy. This thesis offers a comparison of the findings of the Czech and the German Constitutional Courts, which took different views on the case of the electoral treshold in elections to the European Parliament. Arguments of these courts enable the reader to see European Union, position of the European Parliament in its institutional structure and its democratic legitimacy in wider context.

Conflicts of Legitimacies within the European Union - abstract In the beginning of first part, the thesis focuses on the very concept of legitimacy. The point of reference is rather a sociological conception of legitimacy. Then, the critical overview of theoretical contributions to the topic of EU's legitimacy deficit is provided. On this analytical background it is held that the democratic legitimacy is indispensable for the Union and that there is a necessity of its creating even on union-wide (transnational) level. Subsequently, in the second part dealing with particular modalities of legitimacy within the EU, the thesis makes use of the conteporary democratic theory focusing on the concept and functioning of democratic representation. The framework for the second part is a spatio-mechanical metaphor of four modalities ("vectors") of legitimacy (legitimation) formulated previously in the literature. It consists of indirect legitimacy, parliamentary legitimacy, technocratic legitimacy and procedural legitimacy. Changes in their balance after the Lisbon Treaty are discussed. The chapter on indirect legitimacy focuses on theoretical questions and then looks into the institutional and legislative development. It also provides an analysis of the relevant case-law of the Federal Constitutional Court of the...

Esta tese examina a representação política em arenas extraparlamentares, que são fóruns de deliberação com impacto importante sobre as políticas públicas nas democracias contemporâneas. Para tanto, são analisadas as concepções dos representantes que atuam em nome da sociedade civil nos Conselhos Gestores de Políticas Públicas. Com base em diferentes perspectivas teóricas a respeito da representação, foram pesquisadas as seguintes dimensões empíricas: as regras de composição dos Conselhos, o processo de autorização dos conselheiros, a forma como os representantes tomam decisões e prestam contas das suas ações, o controle sobre suas atividades e a visão dos conselheiros a respeito da legitimidade das suas práticas de representação. O estudo constatou que a composição dos Conselhos, o processo de escolha dos conselheiros, a prestação de contas e o controle sobre as ações dos representantes são restritos aos ativistas de organizações civis que acompanham os Conselhos. Apesar dessa restrição, os representantes consideram que defendem interesses gerais e causas universais. Também foi averiguado que quando os conselheiros são ligados a organizações compromissadas com os espaços de discussão em contextos de alta mobilização popular, eles são mais próximos dos usuários dos serviços públicos e dos militantes da área. / This thesis examines the political representation in extra-parliamental arenas, which are deliberation fora with major impact over public policies in contemporary democracies. To achieve this, we analyze the conceptions of the representatives who act on behalf of the civil society in the Sectoral Policy Councils. Based upon the different theoretical perspectives of representation, the following empirical dimensions were researched: the rules of the Councils composition, the councilors authorization process, the way representatives make decisions and the way they are accountable for their actions, the control over their activities and the councilors visions with respect to the legitimacy of their representation practices. The study verified that the composition of the Councils, the process of choosing the councilors, they way representatives make decisions and the way they are accountable for their actions are restricted to activists from civil organizations that follow the Councils. Despite this restriction, the representatives consider they defend general interests and universal causes. It was also verified that when councilors are connected with organizations committed to discussion spaces in contexts of high popular mobilization, they are closer to public services beneficiaries and activists in the area.