Talk:Delegative democracy

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 4 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alex K. Tran. Peer reviewers: Ishangill10.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:56, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The name of the article to properly represent delegative democracy according to Guillermo O'Donnell?
Since delegative democracy is much wider concept not restricted to Guillermo O'Donnell's definition, I suggest current article should be renamed to properly represent this narrow definition and to make space for the primary topic. Delegative democracy in wider sense includes the traditional council democracy stemming from Paris Commune as described by Karl Marx, different flavours of liquid democracy stemming from 2000s, maybe also Parpolity as described by Stephen Shalom. In my understanding Guillermo O'Donnell's is rather a critical normative concept to describe development/deviations of democratic regimes similar to concept of managed democracy than an explanation of a proper model of democratic rule. Under talk page of liquid democracy I proposed to rename the article, but I'm not completely sure about the naming conventions. Any ideas what should be the name for the article? Probably not delegative democracy (transitional deviation), but just limiting the article with the name Guillermo O'Donnell doesn't satisfy the requirements either? Or should the disambiguation remark be used, for example like delegative democracy (authoritarian tendencies in newly created democratic states)? --Märt Põder (talk) 18:49, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note that there is also a redirect from delegated democracy to proxy voting. I am not a native speaker of English, but I presume that delegated democracy is pretty much synonymous with delegative democracy, except if there is explicit definition (but which essentially differs in Marx, O'Donnell and Ford, which means these are three different terms, at least according to theorists using the term). There is also very traditional concept of delegation in represantational democracy (usually attributed to Edmund Burke), which directly contradicts O'Donnell's description of the authoritarian deviation and is probably the actual primary topic for most of the cases. Another suggestion might be to rename current delegative democracy (according to Guillermo O'Donnell) to a book title where O'Donnell discusses this notion to give space to the general term, which has so many other meanings and uses in the tradition of discussing models of democratic rule. However, it would be best, if someone specialized in O'Donnell would suggest proper title for renamed article which would also be accepted by political scientists using O'Donnell's specific notion. I would also appreciate if people opposing the proposed new title would suggest a better title. Maybe delegative democracy (critique of authoritarianism) would be concise enough? --Märt Põder (talk) 18:51, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 8 January 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerm (talk) 16:08, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Delegative democracy → Delegative democracy (authoritarian tendencies in newly created democratic states) – Article needs to be renamed to create disambiguation page for different concepts used under "delegative democracy" Märt Põder (talk) 08:13, 8 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose as proposed. That disambiguation is not WP:CONCISE. -- Netoholic @ 10:16, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose proposed title. Also not sure I understand what you are saying the issue is. Currently the hat note covers any confusion between Liquid democracy and Delegative democracy. Cerebral726 (talk) 14:31, 8 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 15 January 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved - consensus against the proposed title (closed by non-admin page mover) DannyS712 (talk) 19:00, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Delegative democracy → Delegative democracy (critique of authoritarianism) – There are at least four different concepts behind the term "delegative democracy". Since current article is neither primary term nor something reader is searching in first place, it should be moved to create space for the primary topic. This should be a disambiguation page referring to (draft proposal follows):


 * Delegate model of representation, the core principle of delegation in most current democracies (primary topic)
 * Council democracy, the model of delegation in workers' unions and related political organizations
 * Liquid democracy, direct democracy model enabling representation based on individual delegation of votes
 * Delegative democracy (critique of authoritarianism), Guillermo Donnell's critique of authoritarian tendencies in newly created democratic states

This is not final wording for the disambiguation page (and including links to parpolity as well as proxy voting needs to be discussed), but I am providing it here to make inevitable, that this page move is unavoidable. Märt Põder (talk) 18:00, 15 January 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:33, 24 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. These topics aren't really related.  Just because Soviet democracy includes delegates or representative democracy includes delegates doesn't mean that's what somebody means when saying "Delegative democracy" unadorned.  Disambiguation is specifically for a single term with multiple meanings, not merely related terms that make a valid English phrase.  As such, only liquid democracy is a valid source of confusion, and there's a hatnote on top of both this article and liquid democracy which solves the confusion.  The other senses are too distant.
 * Also, even if a move of this article somewhere was decided as useful, this is still a bad parenthetical disambiguator. The "critique" part is secondary, and it's not really describing authoritarianism exactly, so it's misleading and wrong.  SnowFire (talk) 17:09, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment / Clarification. To clarify a bit - I agree with SMcCandlish that disambiguation is specifically for names, not meanings.  The White Album (disambiguation) is specifically for works called "The White Album" not for every album that has the color white on it somewhere.  The question is if casual use of the phrase "delegative democracy" as a name might mean the first (Burke) or second (communism) meaning.  A Google search for "delegative democracy communism" seems to mostly turn up O'Donnel related links, not ones that are referring to Soviet democracy.  The same for "delegative democracy burke", which is slightly better, but still returns a lot of references to O'Donnel.  So I'm not really sold that if somebody wants to talk about Burke's model of democracy they would call it "delegative democracy" based on these Google searches, although I could perhaps be convinced otherwise.  Note: In fairness, Märt Põder found a high-quality source that does refer to Soviet democracy as "delegative democracy" here: Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology   I'm not sure a single book hit, even if a quality one, outweighs the other searches that seem to only focus on O'Donnel, though.  Note that I'm not against Märt Põder cleaning up / improving these articles, of course, since it sounds like you do have some expertise on the topic.
 * While I don't really support a move, I'd suggest Delegative democracy (political theory by Guillermo O'Donnel) if a move had to happen as the most accurate. SnowFire (talk) 16:49, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Support in principle, but a disambiguation that long is a WP:CONCISE failure unless we cannot come up with something shorter despite prodigious effort. I agree with SnowFire that it's also misleading in its particulars.  I don't this moment have a recommended replacement in mind, though. However, I disagree with SnowFire's interpretation of WP:DAB (if I'm, in turn, correctly interpreting what SF is arguing). Whether topics are "related" has nothing to do with disambiguation pages; we have one of those when more than one topic shares [sometimes] the same or too-similar, not meanings. I agree with nom that the phrase "delegative democracy" has multiple potential referents.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:53, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose as proposed. That disambiguation is not WP:CONCISE. -- Netoholic @ 22:40, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose as WP:OVERPRECISION. There is no other article titled "Delegative democracy", so no need for a qualifier in the article title. The lead makes clear what this article is about. Further clarification, if necessary to avoid confusion, should appear in a hatnote, in the body of the article, or in the See Also section. Station1 (talk) 10:20, 2 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.