Gracci demogauges Russia

The return I chose for my search “Gracci demagogues Russia” was an academic book called Contemporary Populism: A Controversial Concept and its Diverse Forms

The intended audience of this text is most likely scholars studying populism as a phenomenon. It lends theoretical and empirical perspective and serves as a good reference for scholars in this field.

Connection:

There is little connection between this book and the search term.

“From the Gracci brothers in Ancient Rome to the Peruvian Raul Victor Raya de la Torre during the inter-war period, populists can be regarded as tribunes who held the power (sometimes considered to be magical) of catalyzing the will and actions of the masses through words.”

“This boils down to promoting the pleasureable at the expense of the good or, in other words, to promising monetary wealth and comfort to the detriment of good, which amounts to an elevation of the being in time. Demoguages evince this facile complacent behaviour or indulge in the spontaneous expression of desire.”

Gherghina, Sergiu, et al. Contemporary Populism: A Controversial Concept and its Diverse Forms. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Voting Systems, Puzzling Humans Since the Second Century

1. Posner, Eric A., and E. Glen Weyl. “Voting squared: quadratic voting in democratic politics.” Vanderbilt Law Review, Mar. 2015, p. 441-470. Academic OneFile. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017.
2. The primary intended audience for this publication are lawmakers who decide how elections should be carried out. This article proposes a new way of voting, called quadratic voting, which the authors believe would amend the inequalities of democracy, majority-rule voting, and other voting systems which privilege one group over another. If people in the United States government could be persuaded that quadratic voting could be a good alternative to democracy, this article would have achieved it’s purpose.
3. The authors do not connect the search terms “Gracchi” and “demagogues Russia” together directly. However, since Russia’s government can be described as a republic or democracy, this article is still relevant. The authors highlight that in governments such as Russia’s, “…people with strong preferences will prevail if they happen to form a majority, but if not, the policy outcome will reduce social welfare rather than increase it” (Posner and Weyl 470).
4. “By taking control of the courts away from the senators and setting up the equites as judges, Gracchus gave the lower classes power over the nobles, and by breaking the harmony that existed previously between the senate and the equites, he made the populace a serious rival to both those classes” (Tiberius Gracchus 25). Here, the narrator recounts that Tiberius instituted a kind of democracy in his land, which gave a voice to the poor who were the majority. The point of this quote is to illustrate that since the poor were the majority, they could vote in their own favor and win every time, ignoring the needs of the wealthy. Posner and Weyl argue that democracy and one-vote per person systems can’t work for the benefit of a nation.
   

Elene T., Team Mars