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Democracy Through the Prism of Accountability: Comparison with Models of the Crisis and Transformation of Democracy

  • Gergana DimovaEmail author
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Part of the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century book series (CDC)

Abstract

The book presents a model of democracy viewed through the lens of government accountability in the aftermath of media allegations. This approach contributes a novel perspective to evaluating democracy. Set in an analytical framework of supply and demand, it challenges, revises and refines existing assumptions, approaches and measurements of democratic progress and regress. It suggests that we should measure supply not only in terms of economic growth or representation, but also in terms of the various opportunities that accountability forums provide. This vision, which I call the “accountability turn”, challenges existing notions of increasing supply through the representative or the deliberative turns. The model also suggests that public demand should not be perceived as too low or too high but that the very constellation of demand has changed and it is expressed differently. Third, the model propounds that demand and supply interact at multiple levels rather than supply falling short of demand or supply refining demand, as present models of democracy propose. Finally, the model contributes new empirical manifestations of the crisis and transformation of democracy, which have been presented in chapters 6,7 and 8.

Keywords

Accountability Fragmentation Democracy Crisis Transformation 
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© The Author(s) 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Applied Social Sciences, Forensics and PoliticsUniversity of WinchesterWinchesterUK

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