Democratic Theory

Requirements of a European Public Sphere. Civil Society, Self, and the Institutionalization of Citizenship.“

by Carlos Closa

Review - David N. Gellner (ed.), Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia (New Delhi, 2010) and Ethnic Activism and Civil Society in South Asia (New Delhi, 2009)

by Uday Chandra

Forthcoming in Social Movement Studies 12 (1), 2013

Supranational citizenship and democracy: normative and empirical dimensions

by Carlos Closa

in La Torre, Massimo (ed.) (1998) European citizenship; an institutional challenge(Dordrecht: Kluwer Law) pages 415-433

Port Huron at Fifty: The New Left and Labor: An Interview with Kim Moody

by Christopher Phelps

Published in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Volume 9, Issue 2 (summer 2012): 25-46.

This interview with Kim Moody, who was present at the Port Huron convention of 1962 as a twenty-two-year-old Johns... more This interview with Kim Moody, who was present at the Port Huron convention of 1962 as a twenty-two-year-old Johns Hopkins University student, illuminates the early history of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), especially the neglected labor-related portions of The Port Huron Statement, one of the most influential manifestos of the sixties radicalization. In a wide-ranging discussion on labor and the New Left, Moody explains the different views of labor represented at Port Huron, appraises individual thinkers such as Tom Hayden and C. Wright Mills, and explores topics such as the meaning of participatory democracy, the politics of labor in the 1960s, class relations in the civil rights movement, the SDS economic and research action projects, and the general relationship between organized labor and the New Left.

Authoritarian crises and democratic transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Julien Morency-Laflamme

This research proposes an analysis of transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy (TD). TD has been the subject... more This research proposes an analysis of transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy (TD). TD has been the subject of many researches, in particular since the end of the 1960s. This research attempted to identify the roots of those regime changes. Most researchers agree that TD is initiated by a conflict or crisis which affects the very legitimacy of the regime. These conflicts have been defined differently according to different authors: new versus old elites, civil society versus the authoritarian regime (RA), or between reformers and hardliners within the RA.
In this research, we criticize this consensus among Africanists. By applying the theoretical framework developed by Schmitter and O’Donnell in “Transition from Authoritarian rule” to the Benin, South African and Togo cases, this research will demonstrate the important how pro-reform forces within authoritarian regimes are a key feature of successful transition to democratic in Africa

Rethinking Populism: Populism as a Political Style

by Benjamin Moffitt

Presented at Australian Political Studies Association Conference, Old Parliament House, Canberra, 26-28 September 2011.

Recent events such as the unexpected return of Pauline Hanson, the rise of the Tea Party, and the continued success of... more Recent events such as the unexpected return of Pauline Hanson, the rise of the Tea Party, and the continued success of Hugo Chávez has meant that populism has enjoyed a resurgence in the fields of political theory and comparative politics over the past decade, moving from a topic of near obscurity to become one of political studies’ central – and most contentious – issues. Yet the very idea of populism remains hazy, with dominant conceptualisations of populism – as ideology, logic, discourse or strategy – often attempting to fit a square peg in a round hole, and failing to capture the specificity of the phenomenon.

As such, this paper argues that thinking of populism as a ‘political style’ presents a way out of interminable debates around the term, and offers a conceptualisation that is amenable to both theoretical development and empirical analysis. To do so, it firstly considers the strengths and weaknesses of current theoretical approaches to populism, before developing the concept of ‘political style’ by drawing on the work of Frank Ankersmit, Robert Hariman and Judith Butler. In the process, it explores the central role of performance within political styles, asks what it actually means to speak on behalf of ‘the people’, and explores the aesthetic and relational elements of populism. It will further draw on empirical examples across the globe to demonstrate that such a concept allows us to understand how populism appears across the political spectrum, as well as how it translates into the political mainstream.

Speaking for the People: Contemporary Populism & Representation

by Benjamin Moffitt

Presented at 'Representation and Its Discontents’, Sydney Democracy Initiative Symposium, University of Sydney, February 24-25, 2011.

A Storied Shooting: Liberty Valance and the Paradox of Sovereignty

by Joshua Dienstag

Political Theory and the Agony of Politics

by Andrew Schaap

Political Studies Review 2007 5(1): 56–74

The importance of each author reviewed here for contemporary political theory is in continuing the critique of liberal... more The importance of each author reviewed here for contemporary political theory is in continuing the critique of liberal political theory in its current dialogical manifestation.The turn to dialogue in liberal theory provides the basis of its claim to have developed a more democratic political philosophy in contrast to its earlier. The work of Mouffe,Arendt and Walzer draws attention to what is elided in the contemporary representation of legitimate politics as dialogue and, thereby, to liberalism’s continuing disavowal of its own political exclusions. If the discourse of rights favoured by liberals in the 1980s tended to overlook the moral and political significance of social interdependence, what the discourse of deliberation tends to neglect is the moral and political significance of contest and struggle which, following the Greeks, is increasingly referred to in contemporary political theory as agonism.

In this review article I draw out the commonalities and differences among these critics of liberalism according to three interrelated themes: the meaning of politics and the concept of the political, the significance of conflict in political life and the constitution of political community. In doing so, I suggest that, like the communitarian critique of liberalism, the current agonistic critique of dialogical liberalism is likely to be transient but certain to return.The transience of the agonistic critique, however, is not due to its dependence on the liberal paradigm. Rather it arises from a difficulty inherent in praxis philosophy itself: the problem of conceptualising political action independently of its institutional representation.

Democracy and the politics of parliamentary immunity in Turkey

by Simon Wigley

Co-authored with Gürcan Koçan

Parliamentary immunity: protecting democracy or protecting corruption?

by Simon Wigley

Parliamentary Immunity in Democratizing Countries: The Case of Turkey

by Simon Wigley

This article examines the effect that shielding elected representatives from criminal law might have in those... more This article examines the effect that shielding elected representatives from criminal law might have in those countries that are undergoing democratization. Parliamentary immunity helps to compensate for any shortfall in the human rights enjoyed by ordinary citizens and provides elected representatives with the protection necessary to rectify that shortfall. However, the immunity may also protect subversive advocacy, rights violations and political corruption. Turkey provides an illuminating case study of those challenges to parliamentary immunity. Drawing on the Turkish experience, it is argued that methods other than exposing parliamentarians to criminal prosecution should be used to counter those problems.

DEMOCRATIZATION, LEGITIMIZATION, AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING, 1870-1938

by Jari Eloranta

Co-authored with Svetlozar Andreev.

See paper. See paper.

"Europäische Schuldenkrise" als Demokratiekrise: Zur diskursiven Interaktion zwischen Politik und Finanzmarkt

by Georg Simmerl

To be published in: Berliner Debatte INITIAL, 2012 (3).

German:

Dieses Papier setzt Habermas' Demokratietheorie und post-strukturalistische Finanzmarktsoziologie... more German:

Dieses Papier setzt Habermas' Demokratietheorie und post-strukturalistische Finanzmarktsoziologie in Bezug zueinander, um die zentrale demokratietheoretische Problematik in der "europäischen Schuldenkrise" aufzuzeigen. Im Finanzmarkt-Kapitalismus haben sich die Finanzmärkte selbst zu einer Öffentlichkeit entwickelt, an die sich Exekutivpolitiker argumentativ wenden müssen - Gesellschaft und Ökonomie sind also nicht getrennte Sphären, sondern diskursiv verschränkt. Durch diese Verschränkung wird jedoch der öffentliche Diskurs seiner demokratiesierenden Kraft beraubt.
Dieses Argument wird in drei Schritten expliziert: Im ersten Teil wird zunächst Finanzmarktgeschehen poststrukturalistisch gedeutet, um davon ausgehend die diskursive Verschränkung von Gesellschaft und Finanzmarkt theoretisch zu erfassen und die politische Artikulationslogik im Finanzmarkt-Kapitalismus zu rekonstruieren. Im zweiten Teil wird diese Artikulationslogik mittels einer interpretativen Inhaltsanalyse von vier Reden europäischer Spitzenpolitiker aus dem Jahr 2011 nachgewiesen. Im letzten Teil werden die Erkenntnisse als Evidenz für eine Demokratiekrise diskutiert und gezeigt, dass eine Politisierung sozioökonomischen Wissens - wie sie auch von diesem Paper praktiziert wird – dabei helfen könnte einen Weg aus dieser Demokratie/Finanzkrise zu finden.


English:

This paper puts Habermasian democratic theory and post-structuralist sociology of finance in relation to each other to investigate the central threat of the current “European sovereign debt crisis” to democracy. In financial capitalism, financial markets have become themselves a public which the political executive has to address argumentatively. Society and economy are thus not separated spheres but discursively interconnected. This interconnection, however, strips the democratizing power off public discourse.
The argument is explicated in three parts. The first part interprets financial markets post-structurally to grasp the discursive interconnectedness between society and financial markets in theory and to reconstruct the logic of political articulation in times of financial capitalism. The second part demonstrates this logic of articulation in the European financial crisis by analyzing four speeches of European top politicians during 2011 interpretatively. The third part discusses the findings as evidence for a crisis of democracy and shows that politicization of socio-economic knowledge – as exemplified by this very article – could help finding a way out of this democratic/financial crisis.

Refusing the market: Democratic discourse for voluntary nonprofit organizations

by Angela Eikenberry

Nonprofit & Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38, 582-596.

O problema da participação política no modelo deliberativo de democracia / The question of the political participation within the deliberativa model of democracy

by Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques

Reference: MARQUES, F. P. J. A. O problema da participação política no modelo deliberativo de democracia. In: Revista de Sociologia e Política (UFPR. Impresso), v.20, n. 41, pp. 21-35. 2012

Title in English: The question of the political participation within the deliberativa model of democracy. Text in... more Title in English: The question of the political participation within the deliberativa model of democracy. Text in Portuguese. Abstract in English: This paper discusses the premises of the deliberative model of democracy as they address the issue of political participation. We attempt to clarify what political participation means for those who use this model, while at the same time looking at some of the major critiques that have been directed toward it. Through a review of an important part of the literature, and without losing sight of earlier systematizations of democratic theory, three fundamental conditions for engendering participation according to this discursive model are pointed to: political institutions should create and offer citizens opportunities to participate in public input; improvement in people's socio-economic condition must be made; attention should be given to particular principles that have consistent regulatory influence on the interactions and arguments in question. This is followed by attention to the criticisms raised and flaws detected by deliberationism's detractors. At the end of the text, a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the model is presented, along with a discussion of the problem of participation in contemporary democracies.

Keywords: Participation; Deliberation; Democracy; Representation.

"The Role of Existential Openness in the Apology and the Gorgias"

by Lee Cheek

A Paper for Presentation at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Georgia Political Science Association, Savannah, Georgia

The Role of Existential Openness in the Apology and the Gorgias

paper is to elucidate the importance of... more The Role of Existential Openness in the Apology and the Gorgias

paper is to elucidate the importance of the commitment to rational discourse in Plato’s Apology and Gorgias.  Both dialogues chronicle the transfer of authority from the destructive world of Athens to Plato.  The organization of the society, according to Plato, is determined by the orderliness of the souls of its citizens.  The central element of the successful Platonic revolution is, following the methodology of Eric Voegelin, a profound yearning for spiritual regeneration. 

Quelle nouvelle histoire pour la recherche en communication? Le cas de Walter Lippmann

by Dominique Trudel

Publié dans Communication, Mars 2012.

Drawing from recent historical work on Walter Lippmann, this research brief discusses the epistemological and... more Drawing from recent historical work on Walter Lippmann, this research brief discusses the epistemological and political issues related to the “new history” of communication research. Specifically, two new historical interpretations are challenged: first the framing of Lippmann as an heir of American pragmatism, and second an appraisal of Lippmann’s ideas as fundamentally democratic.


Cette note de recherche interroge les enjeux épistémologiques et politiques inhérents à la « nouvelle histoire » de la recherche en communication à partir d’une discussion de récents travaux consacrés à Walter Lippmann. Plus précisément, cette note critique deux interprétations émanant de ce courant, soit la thèse de la filiation de Lippmann au pragmatisme et la thèse
d’une pensée fondamentalement démocratique.

Zoran Oklopcic, "Independence Referendums and Democratic Theory in Quebec and Montenegro" (2012) 18:1 Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 22-42.

by Zoran Oklopcic

Global Democracy

by Raffaele Marchetti

2010. in R.Denemark (ed.) ISA Compendium Project-Section on International Ethics, New York: Blackwell, 3007-3023