User:Dmp02013/sandbox

Horizontal Accountability
A system of checks and balances between the the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. Each branch should be able to fucntion with a reasonable amount of autonomy despite the fact that they are not wholly seperate but instead "check each other reciprocally, without one body dominating or interfering with the constitutionally defined core-sphere of the others ".

Within Merkel's idea of embbeded democracy Horizontal Accountability works to constitutionally ensure that an appropriate amount of power is shared among the different institutions to secure the civil rights of the people of the state. There should be agencies created with the legal power to expose and punish other governmental institutions for corruption or other unlawful actions. This is to ensure that no one branch gains a prepoderance of power and is able to unduly influence the policies and governance of the state. It works in tandem with vertical accountabilty which is the systems by which citizens check the power of the government through things such as elections, the media or civil society. However in the eyes of Merkel, Horizontal Accountabilty carries more weight in ensuring internal embeddedness of democracy as it more frequently used than Vertical Accountabilty and the has a more substantial backing within the constitution of a state. If it is indeed contitutionally mandated, Horizontal Accountability can "close a central gap of control in the basic democratic structure, one that is not covered by the first three partial regimes"

Civil Society
Merkel states that civil society serves four functions in strengthening a democracy: protection of the individual from the arbitrary use of state power, support for the rule of law and the balance of powers, education of citizens and recruitment of political elites, and to institutionalize the public sphere as a medium of democratic self-reflection.

In the case of protection from state power, the philosopher John Locke's idea of civil society as seperate from the political sphere is referenced. As the space of the individual, civil society fuctions to develop individual autonomy alongside natural rights and property rights to futher the embeddedness of democracy. Merkel then goes on to reference Montesquieu's concept of institutionalized civil society to check the power of the govenment and to promote balance within a state. Alexis de Tocqueville's concept of civil society and social capital is used as well to explain how a civil society in a state can work to normalize and solidify the democratic process and create an embedded democracy. Local associations are meant to create trust and foster a sense of civic responsibility that is carried out into the national level as well as the political sphere. For the last function of civil society, Habermas's sense of civil society in the fact that cilvil society can also be used as platform for the economically and socially disadvantage to air grieviances with the government and in that way hep to embed democracy within a state.

Delagative Democracy
A delegative democracy occurs when there is a lack of both horizontal accountability and one brach of government become so powerful as to control the entire institution of government. In a delegative democracy it is most often the case that the judiciary and legeslative branches are unable to properly check the power of the executive branch. This leaves the executive to shift the balance of power into thier favor.

However, delegative democracies are still considered constrained in the sense that the president has heavy control of the state only for the length of their term. This creates a high stakes election process wherein the winner is granted power that is only checked by non-instutionalized power structures such as those systems that are a part of vertical accountability. Most of the research in delegative democracies was done on the populist leaders of Central and South America who used the executive branch to govern the country as they see fit.