BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Turnout

This would not be the case, as 16 and 17 year-olds are more likely to be in, or to have recently been in, an environment where politics can be discussed. This means they will have a developed interest in the subject and will be more likely to vote. Even if reducing the voting age were to reduce the turnout, it is preposterous that we should limit the franchise to avoid producing an embarrassing statistic. There would be more people eligible to vote and hence the actual voting numbers would presumably increase, even if percentage turnout didn’t. "Some people are concerned that lowering the voting age would lead to a lower turnout in elections, the theory being that a larger voting population made up of younger voters, who are currently less likely to vote, would reduce the overall turnout. However, analysis by the Electoral Reform Society shows that if 16-18 year olds turned out in the same proportion as the 18-24 age group, there would be virtually no effect on turnout. Even if not one 16-18 year old voted, overall turnout would drop by only 2%. Women are less likely to vote than men, poor people less likely than the more affluent and people from minority ethnic groups less than white people. Nobody suggests that these lower turnout groups should have their voting rights removed. No one should suggest that some 16 and 17 year olds not voting is a good enough reason to deny the many that do want to vote." - Electoral Reform Society
Citizenship

Thirdly, due to the introduction of citizenship classes into the national curriculum, 16-year-olds are now in a better position than ever to make an informed decision at elections. "In 2002, Citizenship was introduced as a compulsory subject as part of the English National Curriculum. At Key Stage 3 young people are taught about the electoral system and the importance of voting, central and local government, and the key characteristics of parliamentary and other forms of government. At Key Stage 4 they explore the actions citizens can take in democratic and electoral processes to influence decisions locally, nationally and beyond the operation of parliamentary democracy within the UK, and of other forms of government, both democratic and non-democratic, beyond the UK. Whilst young people are some of the only citizens to be educated about the voting system, they are denied the right to use this knowledge for at least two further years and anywhere up to seven years." - Electoral Reform Society
Representation

Not all 30-year-olds have extensive knowledge of politics. As a 16-year-old I knew an extensive amount about each of the parties and their policies; I even knew a few hundred politicians and knew what they stood for. I will not respect any law if nobody in government will represent me whilst making it. If 16 year olds can work and pay taxes they should be allowed to choose who governs and spends their tax money on their behalf.
They deserve to have a say.

They have really only just got out to the world and to their 'responsible stage'. They need some time to know how its run now and if it should be different or be changed. They can't just vote or it won't come fair as they may not know how the world is being run by government at this time. Even if they are able to join the armed forces, its a voluntery job. You do not need a certain responsibility to join the forces. Its to simply serve your country. Starting a class around this may disrupt education of other important subjects they have/choose to do. Its a whole other section of learning and one which is unnecessary to have on your shoulders at the same time as GCSE time.
Effected be the policy makers decisions

It is clear that in the modern day a sixteen year old is far more knowledgeable than the ones in the times of the past when such laws differentiating minors and adults were made. With the growing awareness of the society and the daily occurances we observe the sixteen year olds have the ability to understand politics and its effect on their lives. Because noone can deny that what ever happens as a result of the elections the sixteen year olds also are effected by the policies of the election winners. Therefore they must be given the right to be part of the decision making process by being included in the category of those people who chose the leaders who will be given the duty to shape their society and in the process effect their lives.
It would get younger people interested in politics

I agree that younger people need to be interested in politics. However, to give them the vote before they are educated and experienced enough to make truly informed decisions would be a disaster. (Speaking mainly from a U.S. standpoint): Many young people do not even know the history of their own country, let alone the history of other countries. They do not understand the different systems of government in the world and the history of those governments, some of which led to the deaths of millions of people! I hear many young people say history is "irrelevant and meaningless", but nothing could be further from the truth! To paraphrase, "Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it" could well apply to many young people today, as well as some older people, who have not bothered to learn history, or learn the Constitution, or learn about particular issues. People, these things CAN be a matter of life and death - the difference between being free or being a slave, between living under a freely elected leader or dying in a camp under a dictator! If young people want to get involved in politics, they should start at a local level as a volunteer. In the meantime, get educated and experienced before taking the important step of voting!
Alienation

Allowing young people the vote will not result in them suddenly taking an interest in political parties and elections. On the whole, young people are concerned with specific causes and issues and are, therefore, politically active in other ways, e.g. going on protests, signing petitions, etc. I have never heard any of my friends say that there feelings are being hurt by political alienation honestly more often than not we hear 16-17 year olds complaining about everything imaginable except for when it comes to politics and has the ERS run a survey or questionnaire saying that "the exclusion of 16 and 17 year olds from elections is fueling the disengagement of 18-24 year olds and furthermore I find that if 18-24 yr olds wanted to be politically involved they would be.
Rights

It is a good argument. However, statistically, most 16 year olds are not in the army (as are most adults) and they are not married and/or raising a family. Most of them are also uninformed and generally ambivalent toward the politics, so would not vote anyway Yes, on the face of it, if 16 year olds can "die for their country" and "get married and pay tax", they should also be allowed to vote. Yet, how informed are their decisions in dying for their country? In getting married and raising a family? Not very. So it would be with the lowering of the voting age. So rather than informing people, we should oppress this group because we don't like them.
They deserve to have a say.

If they are now in a responsible stage of their life, they deserve a say on who will decide how their schools will be run through elections! Yes Because If a sixteen year old can join the Arm forces, then the right to vote should be allowed. If the voting age is lowered to 16, then politics could become a GCSE course, meaning they will be fully prepared at an early date, ready for an election if they are 16 for example.
It would get younger people interested in politics

The numbers of young people's interest is ridiculously low. How should we address this? One way would be to allow younger people the vote, as it would encourage them to investigate further into how it all works. Some may not be interested at all, thats fine. But should we really obstruct the opportunities for those interested in learning more? I think it is important for young people to be interested in politics as will affect them hugely at some point in their lives, therefore we should offer 16s and over the vote.
There are basic standards of justice which merit global application. Certain crimes against humanit...

There are no agreed international moral standards. The idea of universal jurisdiction offends against cultural relativism. Different acts acquire or lose their criminal nature depending on the culture and context – even, for example, killing is not universally condemned, and is acceptable in many supposedly progressive countries if performed in self-defence. The use of cluster bombs by the USA and Britain in recent conflicts has also been controversial, given their potential to harm civilians and to pose a continuing threat for many years after the war ends. Therefore, it is patronising to argue that, first, there is a set of global moral norms and, secondly, that a particular country’s courts know with certainty what they are.
Individuals who have suffered (or their representatives) have a right to some sort of due process of...

Most nation states reject any supranational level as the appropriate level of decision-making. Therefore “Global” solutions to problems are inherently flawed. This is why so many global organisations are effectively no more than powerless talking shops. Any universal jurisdiction cannot be imposed at will, but will need to be agreed bilaterally with each sovereign state. As the experience of the International Criminal Court has shown, this is a slow, difficult and potentially impossible process.
Individual states cannot always be relied upon to pursue justice. Many states do not attempt to pur...

Universal jurisdiction offends the idea of national self-determination. Sovereign states should have complete and inextinguishable sovereignty over what happens in their countries. If they choose to pool, devolve or abrogate part of this sovereignty, that is one thing – but it is quite a different thing for a third party state to do that to them. Universal jurisdiction is an impediment to effective domestic justice. It effectively creates a two-track system which would fragment the judicial response to what is sometimes a single set of acts i.e. some people would be tried in the domestic courts, others under the international jurisdiction. This offends principles of fairness. The system would also warp the domestic justice system, for example by attracting some of its best legal talent to work overseas under the universal jurisdiction. Finally, prosecutions abroad may undermine local amnesties for past crimes given as the price of ending a bitter civil war or in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, and so lead to political instability and possibly even renewed fighting and further suffering.
Many countries simply lack an effective justice system. Many countries, especially in the developi...

Universal jurisdiction will stray from justice into politics. It is inevitable that universal jurisdiction will see states (or individual plaintiffs) trying to use the system as a means of perpetrating their political strategy via another forum. (Indeed, this is why Belgium scrapped its law: the U.S. strongly hinted that it would lobby for NATO to move its headquarters from Belgium, because it would not risk visiting military officials being arrested under the universal jurisdiction rule).
Universal jurisdiction does not replace domestic courts. Rather, it simply allows another avenue to...

As well as relegating domestic courts to a second class status, Universal jurisdiction would be very expensive to run. This is especially so because of the additional costs any international system involves e.g. travel, translation, etc. It would also be difficult to agree the decision-making process. For a system to have some sort of legitimacy, there would need to be at least some level of international consensus on its substance and process. This would be very time-consuming and controversial to agree; and enforcement would remain a problem. Unless other states co-operate, can defendants be physically brought to trial against their will? If so, how? Or should they be tried in absentia with no ability to defend themselves?
There are basic standards of justice which merit global application. Certain crimes against humanit...

There are basic standards of justice which merit global application. Certain crimes against humanity offend against basic and universal norms of justice. Therefore, all people have an interest in seeing them upheld and should have the legitimate expectation that this will happen. It is a fallacy to argue that asserting universal rights is a form of cultural imperialism. As long as the universal jurisdiction is focused on serious transgressions that are clear violations of the global judicial code (e.g genocide, torture mistreatment of prisoners of war), issues of differing cultural practices are irrelevant.
Individuals who have suffered (or their representatives) have a right to some sort of due process of...

Individuals who have suffered (or their representatives) have a right to some sort of due process of law and remedy for the wrong. It is wrong to deny them that right just because they reside in a country where the act will not be prosecuted. Even more importantly, the global community has a strong interest in deterring future crimes by showing that those who commit atrocities will never be safe from justice and punishment.
Individual states cannot always be relied upon to pursue justice. Many states do not attempt to pur...

Individual states cannot always be relied upon to pursue justice. Many states do not attempt to pursue certain wrongdoing within their borders, either because of corruption or lack of political will. Therefore it falls to “third party” states to fill the shortcoming in such situations. There is often an active disincentive for a country to prosecute its worst human rights offenders. The example of genocide is typical: the perpetrators may be in control of the judicial process, or they may be able to intimidate those who are in control of it, e.g by threatening civil unrest or a political coup. The government may also be loathe to prosecute as it may set a precedent which will be used against some of its own members in subsequent years.
Universal jurisdiction does not replace domestic courts. Rather, it simply allows another avenue to...

Universal jurisdiction does not replace domestic courts. Rather, it simply allows another avenue to justice so that, if the domestic judicial system fails to act on something, the possibility of justice is not extinguished. If anything, this should create an effective incentive for national judicial systems to be more efficient in pursuing wrongdoers. \ Universal jurisdiction would be an effective system. Because of the importance of its decisions, it would likely attract a significant proportion of leading legal talent. Therefore, it would be a well thought out and properly run jurisdiction. Enforcement of its decisions could be by multilateral or bilateral treaties.\
Physical limits

There are numerous physical limits that prevent an absolute monarch from being completely absolute. There are difficulties with having complete information as the speed of communications was limited either to the speed of a relay of horses or else by ship, in which case communication times are variable with the weather. This makes having complete control over a larger country difficult and having effective control over a colonial empire very difficult indeed. Hence while in Spain for example the Council of the Indies was able to control the flow of resources between Spain and America[[John Lynch, ‘Spain 1516-1598: From Nation State to World Empire’, (Oxford, 1994) p.234.]] it was not able to control its expansion in America which was left to private individuals. For this reason numerous companies were set up in all European countries to control colonial expansion as it could not be done effectively by the central government. The growth of bureaucracy is another example of a physical limit, as the interests of the state expanded it became less possible for the King to control everything, the more decisions the King took upon himself the slower things became as everything had to go through numerous different circles of government.[[John Miller, ‘Introduction’, in John Miller ed, Absolutism in Seventeenth Century Europe (Basingstoke, 1990), p.17.]] Kings such as Philip II of Spain could try to handle all decisions however this made administration extremely slow, Philip was constantly behind on business “I have a lot to send you from yesterday, but it is not possible now. I will do it tomorrow.”[[Lynch, Spain, p.268.]]
Opposition from the people

The effectiveness of absolutism relied as much on the subjects acceptance as upon the ability of the monarch to coerce them.[[Miller, Introduction, p.13.]] In Sweden absolutism was very much with the consent of the majority, as it was voted for by the Diet, allowing the king to effectively go as far as he wished.[[Upton, A.F. ‘Sweden’ , in John Miller ed, Absolutism in Seventeenth Century Europe (Basingstoke, 1990), p.99.]] In Sweden the Land Law of Magnus Erikson was effectively the constitution. This stipulated that the King governed Sweden according to law and custom with the advice of a council, the main limitation was that the king was required to consult representatives of the community on such things as taxation, changes to the laws and on war. This could be interpreted as meaning Sweden should have an absolute monarchy In the Riksdag of 1680 Absolutism came about through consent, particularly as during the early phases of the Riksdag the crown had no clear plans, and royal absolutism did not come about in anything like a single bill. It was the commoners, supported by the Clergy and the Burghers who pushed for an absolute reduktion. That the King was absolute was confirmed when the King issued three questions too the riksdag, and got unanimous answers on all three; the King was not bound by the form of government, the riksrad was not an estate and did not have a mediating role, and that it was up to the king what he referred to the riksrad as he was solely responsible to God.[[A.F. Upton, ‘The Riksdag of 1680 and the Establishment of Royal Absolutism in Sweden’, The English Historical Review, Vol.102 No.403, (Apr 1987), pp.281-308, pp.296, 298, 305-306.]]
Only god is above the King

Louis XIV is a good example of a King who believed in virtually no limitations on the King. Louis XIV went further in being absolutist than most theorists would allow through violating some of the fundamental laws of France, the inalienability of the crown and of the domain. The only limits that Louis believed in were that he was subordinate to god, and that he must sacrifice his desires to the public welfare. Even these were rather flimsy theoretical limits as he believed that only the king could interpret the Kings obligation to god. Louis denied that what he wished arbitrarily could be different from the good of the people, as such he more often sacrificed his people’s interests instead of his own,[[Paul W. Fox, ‘Louis XIV and the theories of Absolutism and Divine Right’, The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol.26 No.1 (Feb 1960) pp.128-142, pp.138-140.]] making these limits no limits at all. How far the King wished to go is obviously a limit, however it cannot be said that absolutism is limited by this.
Patronage

One of the main achievements of French absolutism was that the divisions of the nobility were built into a stable system where they fought their conflicts through the judicial system.[[David Parker, ‘Class and State in Ancien Regime France The road to modernity?’, (London, 1996), p.204.]] This was effectively taming the nobility and bringing them onside. The King controlled the nobility through being the principle fount of patronage, he could give the most desirable offices, dispersing them amongst the nobility to keep them from becoming disaffected.[[Roger Mettam, ‘France’, in John Miller ed, Absolutism in Seventeenth Century Europe, (Basingstoke, 1990), p.46.]] Patronage was a network that connected all levels and all areas of the country creating shared interests and reciprocal obligations.[[Nachison, Absentee Government, p.268.]] This occurred as The King gave out offices such as governorships which could then appoint numerous local offices. With the absolute monarch taking control of the army any elements of the nobility that wished to take part in wars were tied into the permanent army, having to be within the system of patronage that allowed them to be appointed as officers.
Absolutism.

Whether absolute Monarchy was limited Monarchy in theory is already answered. The answer to that is, of course, no. Absolute Monarchy implies that there were no restrictions, laws etc., apart from those that the Monarch made up, but the Monarch themselves never had to abide by them. That is absolute Monarchy. Limited Monarchy suggests that the Monarchy has restrictions and rules upon it either created by itself its government. These are two very different things. However, what this question is actually asking is "Is there a difference in practice? (or was there a difference?)" The answer to this is yes. An absolute Monarchy would never attempt what was impossible to do/get away with. It would only act within its realistic predictions/options. However, this does not mean to say that Monarchs have never done terrible things. Monarchs could get away with pretty much whatever they wanted, on a small scale. They couldn't necessarily invade whoever they wished and, yes, they certainly had councillors, assistants, experts et al. helping them. But again, this in no way implies that Monarchs acted in a mostly limited fashion. The important point, anyway, is the question of whether there is a difference in theory and, as we have seen, yes - there is.
Money

Lack of resources was a limit no monarch was ever able to escape from. It gave the kings subjects a negotiating counter. The French nobility was particularly unwilling to be taxed or to have the scrutiny that came with taxes and resisted inroads into their tax exemptions.[[David Parker, ‘Class and State in Ancien Regime France The road to modernity?’, (London, 1996), pp.200-201.]] In the French provinces the King often had to make compromises in order to get what he wanted, normally money,[[Beth Nachison, ‘Absentee Government and Provincial Governors in Early Modern France: The Princes of Conde and Burgundy, 1660-1720’, French Historical Studies, Vol21 No.2 (Spring 1998) pp.265-297.]] as fiscal administration remained in the hands of the provincial estates who were also involved in such economic projects as the Canal du Midi.[[Parker, Class and State, p.178.]]
Opposition from the people

The main limit on absolutism is the people, including the institutions that the people use to check the King. The King will need a large amount of support in the institutions or the estates if he is to rule absolutely, the more the people and the institutions wish to prevent absolutism the harder it becomes for the King to govern Absolutely. The King often gains his support from the Nobility, thus Louis XIV protected the interests of the nobility to get their support. However Louis XIV also had less resistance from the people later in his reign despite increasing tax burdens there were very few revolts against these taxes.[[Miller, Introduction, pp.12-13.]] Meaning that either they supported the King to some extent or else the vast majority of people in higher levels accepted the Kings authority and in turn coerced the remaindered of the populace.