Democracy

El Pacto de Puntofijo y el Programa Mínimo Común que lo acompaña, como parte de la estructura de consensos generados durante el tránsito de la dictadura a la democracia ocurrido en 1958, son síntesis política y programática del proyecto nacional democrático venezolano, que hizo posible no solo la consolidación de un sistema político democrático, sino también la profundización del modelo de modernización sociopolítica y socioeconómica de Venezuela.

Morally and spiritually elevated individuals called Sadvipras (spiritual revolutionaries) are needed to lead and guide society through its cyclic evolutionary order and to create a balanced, non-exploitive and spiritually progressive society, according to Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar. He describes serious defects in both dialectical materialism and in democracy, and concludes: “So you see, democracy is not a very good or simple system. But unless an alternative, better and more agreeable theory or system is evolved, we will have to accept democracy in preference to other systems, and make use of it for the time being.” Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, (1921-1990), was a spiritual teacher (also known as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti) and social philosopher, who propounded PROUT (Progressive Utilization Theory) and founded the socio-spiritual movement Ananda Marga (“the Path of Bliss”).  –  Richard Gauthier, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California, USA, March 23, 2021.

The Pedagogy of the Empowered offers an alternative way to address controversies roiling colleges, universities, and education about race, social justice, freedom of speech, religion and the standing of
conservative students, who often feel silenced in progressive classrooms. It also is an alternative to ideas of citizen as consumer and politics as a fight about "who gets what," the classic formulation of Harold Lasswell.

The revision responds to comments and discussion of the March 20 draft of the paper.

In The Fifth Cleavage: Genealogy of the Populist Ideology and Parties, Giovanni Barbieri proposes an in-depth analysis of populism as one of the central phenomena in the contemporary public and political debate. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the causes of the emergence of populism and its possible effects on the political system and democratic institutions. The central thesis of the book is that populism is originated by a cleavage between two opposite groups—the people and the elite—which appeared for the first time soon after the democratic revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This cleavage is not constantly active, but it tends to reactivate itself only under certain circumstances, when certain critical junctures occur, thus giving rise to different “waves” of populism. When the “populist cleavage” is active, the other lines of division and conflict (of class, of religion, etc.) lose their relevance. What are the features of this cleavage? What kind of relationship does it have with the well-known traditional cleavages (capital-labor, state-church, urban-rural, center-periphery)? What are the characteristics of the recent “wave” of populism? And what are its effects on the functioning of democracy? These are the main questions to which this book is devoted.

Throughout the history with the industrial developments and revolutions, many forms of power have been practiced including systems such as capitalism, feudalism, secularism, communism, liberal democracy, totalitarianism and democracy; yet in all forms, democracy has nearly proved itself to be at least the best we have.

What makes democracy a particular mode of social and political organization? We argue that the particularity of democracy consists in the logic that characterizes the form of authority this practice constitutes between its participants. This is a logic of mutuality and second-personality, which can be best understood by looking at the relations between democratic decision-makers as democratic voting primitively illustrates.

RESUMEN
La corrupción es una de las principales preocupaciones de la ciudadanía. Forma parte de nuestra vida cotidiana. Los medios de comunicación nos muestran sus detalles diariamente. Se expresa en sus múltiples dimensiones: económica-empresarial, social, política, jurídica y cultural, dimensiones muchas veces interrelacionadas. Este artículo propone una visión integradora del fenómeno de la co-rrupción desde una aproximación de la filosofía política en diálogo con las ciencias sociales. Por ello, se presentarán algunas claves de interpretación y reflexiones sobre cómo abordar este fenómeno. Se trata, pues, de un esfuerzo para aportar una mejor comprensión de la corrupción a través del estudio de sus condiciones de posibilidad, sus relaciones con la sociedad y la necesidad de entender su funcio-namiento como paso previo a una valoración. Así, se argumentará que únicamente una ciudadanía empo-derada puede hacer que las institu-ciones funcionen eficazmente en la lucha contra la corrupción. De los hechos a la valo-ración Es una constatación obvia que "la corrupción es mala" pero tam-bién es una afirmación tautológi-ca, puesto que la propia palabra "corrupción" designa su valoración negativa, la sustantividad de una maldad. Ello nos permite emitir un juicio moral a priori, antes de la ex-periencia, antes de conocer los de-talles concretos del acto corrupto: cualquier corrupción es necesaria-mente mala. No puede haber una corrupción "buena", no se puede defender la corrupción, una persona no puede definirse como corrupta y pretender ser aceptada y valorada socialmente. De hecho, la propia corrupción no solo es un sustantivo, también es un adjetivo que califica negativamente actividades, acciones y personas. De esta manera, además de cali-ficar una realidad, también es un insulto político: "X es un corrupto". Así pues, la intrínseca inmoralidad de la corrupción tiende a situarla en el campo de la ética, un campo necesario pero no único. El juicio ético no puede abrir y cerrar el aná-lisis, ha de ser la consecuencia de la evaluación de los hechos y solo después, proceder a su valoración.

ABSTRACT
Corruption is one of the main concerns of citizens. It is part of our daily life. The media show us their details on a daily basis. It is expressed in its multiple dimensions: economic-business, social, political, legal and cultural, dimensions that are often interrelated. This article proposes an integrative vision of the phenomenon of corruption from an approach of political philosophy in dialogue with the social sciences. Therefore, some interpretation keys and reflections on how to approach this phenomenon will be presented. It is, therefore, an effort to provide a better understanding of corruption through the study of its conditions of possibility, its relations with society and the need to understand its operation as a previous step to an assessment. Thus, it will be argued that only an empowered citizenry can make institutions work effectively in the fight against corruption. From the facts to the evaluation It is an obvious observation that "corruption is bad" but it is also a tautological statement, since the very word "corruption" designates its negative evaluation, the substantivity of an evil. This allows us to make a moral judgment a priori, before the experience, before knowing the concrete details of the corrupt act: any corruption is necessarily bad. There cannot be "good" corruption, corruption cannot be defended, a person cannot define himself as corrupt and pretend to be socially accepted and valued. In fact, corruption itself is not only a noun, it is also an adjective that negatively qualifies activities, actions and people. In this way, in addition to qualifying a reality, it is also a political insult: "X is corrupt." Thus, the intrinsic immorality of corruption tends to place it in the field of ethics, a necessary but not unique field. The ethical judgment cannot open and close the analysis, it must be the consequence of the evaluation of the facts and only afterwards, proceed to its evaluation.

The entry provides an outline and systematisation of societal constitutionalism (SC), one of the main frameworks emerged in contemporary legal theory to analyse constitutional phenomena. After a general introduction in section A, section B recalls SC’s theoretical background, namely the Economic Constitution (B.I), legal pluralism (B.II), systems theory (B.III), and the work of David Sciulli (B.IV). Section C explains SC’s analytical limb, which on the one hand de-constructs some tenets of state-centred constitutionalism (C.I); and on the other hand individuates the functions, arenas, processes, and structures of a constitutionalised system (C.II). Section D turns to SC’s normative limb, pointing to some legal policy proposals, aimed at the increase of social systems’ capacities of self-limitation (D.I); and at the development of a law of inter-systemic collisions (D.II). Section E concludes addressing some of the main competing approaches and criticisms, namely those coming from the proponents of state-centred constitutionalism (E.I); of international/global constitutionalism (E.II); and of contestatory/material constitutionalism (E.III).

By reference to the impact of populism on the foundational rules of democratic legal systems, the paper explores the interconnectedness of two "essentially contested concepts", 1 democracy 2 and populism, 3 and their relationship with another ambiguous concept, the rule of law. 4 The main argument is that populism aims to amend the democratic rule of recognition, the most important 'rule about rules' upon which a legal system is founded. This has not been rigorously studied so far, despite its significance for a holistic conceptualisation of populism and for the analysis of its relationship with democracy. For, the rule of recognition provides a relatively stable point of reference for measuring the effect of populism on democracy. Based on Hart's theory of legal positivism, 5 the paper argues that while democracy and populism purportedly apply similar criteria to determine the validity of laws, populism promotes a different hierarchy and understanding of these concepts and, as a result, undermines

Die Deutschen sind im Kern eine konservative Nation: Man hält Regeln lieber ein, als sie zu brechen; Konsens ist oberstes Gebot; den Institutionen vertraut man eher, als sie in Frage zu stellen; und selbst Revolutionen müssen, wie es oft ironisch heißt, vorher in dreifacher Ausfertigung beantragt werden. Dies erklärt sicherlich, wieso die Christdemokratie als (ursprünglich) typische Mitte-rechts Partei leichtes Spiel hatte, zur staatstragenden Kraft zu werden. Doch die Zeiten ändern sich, wie spätestens die Wahlen in Baden-Württemberg und Rheinland-Pfalz verraten. Die CDU auf dem Weg in die Selbstverzwergung?

African countries have increasingly embraced devolution as a strategy to improve governance, promote accountability, remedy institutional deficiencies and democracy that highly centralized governments have engendered. In 2010, the government of Kenya did a momentous task by constituting a new constitution that outlines the functions of a devolved
system of governance. Devolution in Kenya attempts to bring government closer to the people by devolving economic, and political resources to Kenya´s forty-seven county governments. It also envisaged to give the power of self-governance to the people and enhance their participation in governance. The thesis aims to investigate and analyze the impact of the devolved government on democratic governance through a legal framework, service delivery, public participation, capacity building, social unity, and political interests. It uses Makueni and Murang’a county as a case study. Makueni county is christened as one of the best performing counties, while Murang’a county is one of the struggling counties with several governance issues. The thesis attempts to gauge the range to which devolution has been implemented at the county level and the effects of devolution. However, since its rollout
in 2013, there has been a mounting public criticism levelled at these devolved units of government based on documented evidence pointing to graft, nepotism, cronyism, ethnicity, corruption, misallocation of economic and political resources, incompetence and failure to pay bills for services rendered and other similar malpractices that exhibit a culture of impunity that Kenyans have got socialized to since independence,1963. These results are credible and generalizable, in several cases, for other counties in Kenya.

Wie ein Brennglas hat das Corona-Virus die sozialen, politischen und ökonomischen Probleme der Gesellschaft offenbart. Vor allem im Umgang mit Risiken müssen wir noch einiges lernen. Bitte beachten Sie: Das Manuskript ist ausschließlich zum persönlichen, privaten Gebrauch bestimmt. Jede weitere Vervielfältigung und Verbreitung bedarf der ausdrücklichen Genehmigung des Urhebers bzw. des SWR. SWR2 können Sie auch im SWR2 Webradio unter www.SWR2.de und auf Mobilgeräten in der SWR2 App hören-oder als Podcast nachhören. Kennen Sie schon das Serviceangebot des Kulturradios SWR2? Mit der kostenlosen SWR2 Kulturkarte können Sie zu ermäßigten Eintrittspreisen Veranstaltungen des SWR2 und seiner vielen Kulturpartner im Sendegebiet besuchen. Mit dem Infoheft SWR2 Kulturservice sind Sie stets über SWR2 und die zahlreichen Veranstaltungen im SWR2-Kulturpartner-Netz informiert. Jetzt anmelden unter 07221/300 200 oder swr2.de Die SWR2 App für Android und iOS Hören Sie das SWR2 Programm, wann und wo Sie wollen. Jederzeit live oder zeitversetzt, online oder offline. Alle Sendung stehen mindestens sieben Tage lang zum Nachhören bereit. Nutzen Sie die neuen Funktionen der SWR2 App: abonnieren, offline hören, stöbern, meistgehört, Themenbereiche, Empfehlungen, Entdeckungen … Kostenlos herunterladen: www.swr2.de/app

In India, as elsewhere, voters and electoral observers refer to powerful, emerging political trends as “waves,” such as the “Modi wave” that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power. In rural South India, during the run‐up to the 2019 national elections, how did people read signs of political waves, and how did voters align themselves with these signs as they circulated across media forms? A “wave theory” analysis finds that rural voters in the state of Tamil Nadu assess electoral chances across various factors—including candidates’ cash flow, crowd behavior, caste calculations, and professional analyses of polling data. People take electoral positions within ambient and layered ecologies of information, in which everyday speculation about political fortunes is situated alongside formalized methods of analysis, calculation, and prediction. And because electoral waves are experienced locally but often carry energy from afar, they constitute both a force and a fluid medium of convergence.

This article is about how digitalization has fostered a networked media environment enabling metamorphoses in popular politics. With the recent passing of two leaders of the Tamil nationalist movement, a half century of politics dominated by film stars and script writers leading Dravidian parties appears to be coming to an end in Tamil Nadu, India. Two recent political formations are especially worth focusing on in the new context: 1) Emergent leaderless forms of mobilization are reclaiming and reconfigur-ing nationalist idioms of populism, and 2) violent, dominant caste-based, anti-Dalit politics appear to be fragmenting the hegemony of Dravidianist politics at the very same moment. Despite the appearance of a paradoxical coincidence or contradiction, both caste politics and the new protests recall pasts that have been built through film and Dravidianist party imagery. This article examines logics of popular sovereignty where changing media technologies of image production have played a central role in "shortcir-cuiting" older claims to representation. [