The Lawrence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. 2019 Brown Democracy Medal winners David M. Farrell and Jane Suiter are co-leads on the Irish Citizens' Assembly Project, which has transformed Irish politics over the past decade. The project started in 2011 and led to a series of significant policy decisions, including successful referenda on abortion and marriage equality. Thanks to generous funding from The Pennsylvania State University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes, available from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Bringing together ten leading researchers in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers how DMPs link into democratic systems. It examines the core design features of DMPs and their role in the broader policy process and takes stock of the characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of citizen participation. In doing so, the book offers valuable insights into the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times.

Drawing on research from multiple disciplines and international case studies, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of online disinformation and its potential countermeasures. Disinformation and Manipulation in Digital Media presents a model of the disinformation process which incorporates four cross-cutting dimensions or themes: bad actors, platforms, audiences, and countermeasures. The dynamics of each dimension are analysed alongside a diverse range of international case studies drawn from different information domains including politics, health, and society. In elucidating the interrelationship between the four dimensions of online disinformation and their manifestation in different international contexts, the book demonstrates that online disinformation is a complex problem with multiple, overlapping causes and no easy solutions. The book’s conclusion contextualises the problem of disinformation within broader social and political trends and discusses the relevance of radical innovations in democratic participation to counteract the post-truth environment. This up-to-date and thorough analysis of the disinformation landscape will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of journalism, communications, politics, and policy as well as policymakers, technologists, and media practitioners. This research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825227.

In one handy book, all the information, all the details, all the ideas for what to do with children in Dublin.

Debate currently rages in the economic voting literature over whether national economic perceptions generally have an important impact on the vote choice in democracies. Recently, a revisionist view has arisen, contending that this link, regularly observed in election surveys, is mostly spurious. According to the argument, partisanship distorts economic perception, thereby substantially exaggerating the real vote connection. However, utilizing election panel studies a clear link has found that economics matters. These studies have focussed on plurality electoral systems where the attribution of blame and reward is more straightforward. We extend the test to proportional systems with panel studies for Ireland and Germany. During the Celtic Tiger period in Ireland (2002 and 2007 elections) we find that partisanship trumps the economy while in Germany for the period 2002-2009 a more complex picture emerges.

Clergy are political elites. This much is clear. However, direct evidence linking clergy behavior to political belief and action by religious publics has been elusive. This is actually not surprising given that clergy are often situated in complex institutional contexts with myriad group and interpersonal pressures to navigate on a regular basis. As the clergy politics literature moves away from reliance on the overly broad religious tradition framework, new opportunities to gain unprecedented insight on how previously under-emphasized causal factors and research methods may enhance our understanding of clergy as political elites become apparent. We use this paper to advance three familiar, but underutilized, tools to explain clergy political opinion formation. The first is application of the clergy professional fatigue literature to an inherently political outcome. The second is the use of experimental design in the study of clergy politics. The third is the location of our investigation among clergy in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Our results confirm findings from a growing trend of clergy scholarship that emphasizes the influence of personal and institutional factors beyond political preferences in explaining clergy political opinion.