TITLE:
Strengthening the Democratic Project: Information as the Foundation of the Fourth Estate
AUTHORS:
Andrew P. Kakabadse, Nada Kakabadse
KEYWORDS:
Democratic Cycle, Custodiary, Fourth Estate, Independent Perspective, Representative Democracy
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.12 No.2,
April
26,
2022
ABSTRACT: Studies show that citizen dissatisfaction with democracy is on the rise.
Equally, trust in public institutions is on the decline, but despite this,
citizens desire to shape the future of society is growing. The contribution of
this paper is three-fold. First, the varying interpretations of democracy are
scrutinised in order to surface the nature of scrutinized liberal democracy.
Second, the negative impacts of democracy cycles are highlighted as shaped by the interests of elites
in their pursuit of economic gain thus undermining liberal democracy and the
adoption of diversity. Third, and through such influence, the independence of
the fourth estate is diminished requiring the institutionalisation of the
custodiary in order to promote a fourth democratic wave. Thus, the aim of our paper
is to surface a free flow of contrasting perspectives from multiple entities
and in so doing make the case for regulation which limits undesired
monopolistic and oligopolistic interests.