...This chapter demonstrates how a plebiscitarian commitment to a politics of candor shapes a distinctive approach to reforming democratic institutions. Sections 6.2 through 6.5 explore the consequences of making candor the primary value in democratic reform, by analyzing three practices...

... for manœuvre to institutional engineers. This was at least quite obvious in the realm of electoral laws. Institutional engineering in Eastern Europe, however, showed that the progressive intention to make democracy work combined with the concept of plebiscitarian decision‐making is always in danger of being...

...This chapter tests the validity of the institutional learning and diffusion axioms using the systemic variations existing in Germany between 1949 and 1989. To address the issue, the chapter discusses the basics of the representative, socialist, and plebiscitarian democracies. Then it examines...

... constructs a democratic theory applicable to the way democracy is actually experienced by most people most of the time. In approaching democracy from the perspective of the People's eyes, the book rediscovers and rehabilitates a forgotten “plebiscitarian” alternative within the history of democratic thought...