This book, along with its companion volume, Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen, relates the democratic potential of the latest electronic technologies to the idea of direct-participatory democracy. Taking a critical look at the past and present theories of democracy, this volume clarifies the original meaning of the idea of democracy and explains the distortions it has suffered throughout its long history.

Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen: Direct-Deliberative e-Democracy conceptualizes the age-old idea of democracy in a new way. The fundamental idea underlying this new conceptualization is the now-neglected notion of the people's sovereignty. Although democracy means rule by the people, the people cannot rule unless they are empowered to do so. In order to introduce the notion of sovereignty, and its direct exercise into the liberal-democratic conceptual scheme, this book attempts to 'individuate' the idea of the people's sovereignty via individuating the notion of the...

Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the People: The Betrayal of an Ideal argues that the conception of democracy that prevails in the general consciousness of the contemporary world is a distorted version of the 'original' idea of democracy. An important component of democracy in its original formulation was the ideal of the citizens' direct participation in the legislative and political decision-making process, yet modern representative governments frequently disregard this fundamental component. While often justified by claims of impracticality, Majid Behrouzi sets up the case for a...