Government and Democracy

La sociedad de la información se ha trocado en la sociedad de la confusión. Cuanto más se dice, menos veracidad (confianza en la verdad) se tiene, más ruido se alcanza. En esta sociedad, la esfera pública no puede darse con la necesaria transparencia y libertad. Es imprescindible la esfera del debate plural y la transparencia informativa, del discurso. Pero no hay debate efectivo si no se dan el reconocimiento de la incertidumbre y la opinión, en el marco de consensos o (...) valores compartidos. Un encuentro que nos sitúa en la posición del otro para entenderla, aunque no se esté de acuerdo. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to provide a novel account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism. I first claim that the standard version of this argument is questionable due to its reliance on a problematic central premise, namely that excessive wealth damages democracy because of its detrimental impact on political equality. Subsequently, I relocate the fundamental democratic worry in regard to excessive wealth in the process of backsliding, and more specifically in the relation between excessive wealth and political polarization. I (...) then offer a new account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism which envisages wealth capping as instrumental for democratic resilience, but I maintain that the argument is not unambiguously successful. (shrink)

The chapter "Confucian Approaches" as part of the Digital Ethics handbook (Nomos Handbuch series) is an introduction to Confucian thought models applied to phenomena of digitality that are critically viewed from the perspective of digital ethics. After a general introduction of the relevance of non-European thought models for grasping the modern world, the book chapter looks at political, cultural and technological disruptions in antiquity that may serve as a blueprint for understanding contemporary changes and ruptures. This critical assessment is followed (...) by an outline of Confucianism's concept of virtues and humans' position in society. Subsequently, Confucianist principles in online and offline contexts and their related practices are discussed and linked to current political debates such as the People's Republic of China's recent rediscovery, and instrumentalization, of Confucianism as a tool of power both domestically and in the international arena. (shrink)

Epistocracy and populism are usually seen as opposites. The first finds error in democracy’s reliance on the sub-optimal decisions by the supposedly incompetent masses, and argues that political decisions should be tied to epistemic merit, not popularity. The populist critique of democracy, contrarily, finds that there is not enough political confrontation in standard representative democracies where the ‘real people’ are not properly embodied, and thus pits an imagined direct will of the unified and virtuous people against a self-serving establishment. This (...) article demonstrates that these ideologies have surprising underlying similarities concerning their categorization, political ontology, epistemology and a conception of political authority. Firstly, they both are second-order political ideologies that are not directly tied with substantive political content but rather with the interpretation of how to govern assuming disagreement concerning first-order political ideologies. Secondly, their political ontology divides citizens into two constitutively differing parts, one of which they (partly) exclude from political membership. Thirdly, their political epistemology assumes the existence of political truths which makes their conception of authority anti-proceduralist, either instrumentalist or moralist. Fourthly, they downplay the value of pluralism, deliberation and dissent. Uncovering these commonalities helps us detect and understand the dynamics of some anti-democratic tendencies better. (shrink)

One of the influential contributions to criminalisation theories is Duff’s work on public wrongs, which offers a thin master principle of criminalisation, proposing that we have a reason to criminalise a type of conduct if it constitutes a public wrong; one that violates a polity’s civil order and forms part of that polity’s proper business. The nature of the civil order, the scope of its proper business, and the distinction between the public and private realms of wrongs are context-relative to (...) each polity, structured by their legal, institutional, and informal values and ways of life. Such a context-relative view led to problematic criminalisation examples raised by Duff and his critics. This article engages more fully with the relativism of the civil order and public wrongs in non-democratic and illiberal contexts. It draws on examples such as Saudi Arabi and Iran, and Beetham’s work on the legitimation of power to argue that conceptualising the civil order as an undifferentiated whole that represents a polity’s chosen way of life overlooks the ways in which the civil order’s values and practices are shaped by relations of power and exclusion rules and processes. This, in turn, exposes the theory to the risk of mirroring and legitimising unequal relations of power and impeding efforts to change them. This is also due to the theory’s lack of proper normative guidance on the legitimacy of criminalisation. The potential commitment to – instead of a preference for – democracy and guarantees of equality and freedoms might help strengthen the theory normatively, but it is insufficient to guard against the raised problems. (shrink)

Botswana’s history is one of an unwavering exercise of self-determination and quest for self-rule. Post-independence, self-government prioritized an overarching philosophy of Kagisano or social harmony within which the aims of education were framed, in conjunction with a political commitment to Botho through democracy. For economic and social reasons the current educational policy of Botswana is driven by outcome-based education (OBE), with its metrics of quantifiable outcomes. This article argues that Olúfemi Táíwò’s analysis of decolonization provides a philosophical lens through which (...) to interpret Botswana’s current educational pathway within the prevailing decolonization discourse. OBE clearly exhibits features of neocolonialism, as it pertains to the national value principles. We draw on Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s decolonial epistemic perspective to frame the discussions. Insofar as OBE can be integrated with Botswana’s ethnically inclusive, community-based view of democracy and associated virtues, this is a worthy goal for education, and it could lead to a particular form of indigenized democracy. Substantive distinctions among the concepts of decolonization, neocolonialism, and decoloniality underwrite this thesis. We see the project of envisaging a future of education in Botswana as having to do with disentangling colonialist–imperialist cultural reproduction from indigenous aspirations. (shrink)

We examine the impact of a government-initiated CSR project on corporate misconduct using the unique setting of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program. The difference-in-differences estimates show that firms participating in the TPA program engage in fewer misconduct activities than do their counterparts. This finding is robust to the parallel trends test, the placebo test, alternative regression specifications, alternative research designs, the reverse causality analysis, and the bivariate probit model with partial observability. Further analysis shows that TPA participation enhances the (...) ability of external financial professionals to monitor performance by stimulating the dissemination of TPA-related incremental information, thereby contributing to the decline in corporate misconduct. The cross-sectional heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of TPA participation on corporate misconduct is more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry, with weaker political connections, and with weaker internal governance. Furthermore, we find evidence that TPA participation improves corporate financial performance but does not deteriorate information transparency. (shrink)

While the importance of fostering individual taxpayers’ (hereafter taxpayers) trust in government to encourage tax compliance is widely acknowledged, how policy actions can increase trust in government remains unclear. Thus, the main purpose of our research is to see whether policy actions that signal government benevolence during a crisis can quickly increase trust in government, and its positive implications for tax compliance intentions. Another goal of our research is to see whether such a quick change of trust is driven by (...) emotions. To test this, we use the British COVID-19 Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (hereafter SEISS) as a natural experiment. Right after the SEISS was launched to the British public, we recruited a sample of 500 British self-employed taxpayers via Prolific. Our results suggest that receiving (vs. not receiving) government support increases trust in government and enhances tax compliance intentions. In addition, trust in government mediates the positive impact of receiving (vs. not receiving) government support on tax compliance intentions. More important, our results suggest that policy actions that signal government benevolence during a crisis can increase trust in government quickly because it is driven by taxpayers’ emotions such as gratitude. These results have important implications for governments to efficiently deal with the sharp rise in public debts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Power is classically understood as the playing out of relations between the ruler and the ruled. Political impasse is often viewed as a moment in which no clear-cut delineation of power exists, resulting in an overwhelming sense of frustration or feeling stuck in a no-win situation. The new globalised world has produced a real shift in how power works: not only has power been concentrated in the hands of very few while many millions become more oppressed by radical shortages and (...) growing costs, but we also have a new category of political subjectivity in which many find themselves neither rulers nor radically oppressed. Those who live the neither/nor of contemporary power live the new global impasse. For those of us who are stuck and compelled to wait for dominant power to break, this book uncovers possibilities in thought, imagination, and self-appropriation through oikeiosis, that is, making oneself at home in oneself, and constancy. (shrink)

Prenant le contre-pied de la plupart des commentaires actuels, Edwige Kacenelenbogen mène l'enquête sur l'effacement, voire la "disparition", du politique au sein des théories actuelles de la démocratie. Elle met en parallèle le principe libertarien d'ordre spontané élaboré par Friedrich von Hayek, avec les théories néorépublicaines de Philip Pettit, David Miller et Jean-Marc Ferry, pour démontrer que les perspectives néolibérale et républicaine se rejoignent dans une compréhension spontanéiste du politique. Le rôle de l'autorité politique devient ambigu, révélant ainsi la faiblesse (...) constitutive et l'apathie du modèle néorépublicain. Ce livre éclaire à la fois la profonde crise démocratique que traversent aujourd'hui la plupart des pays occidentaux, et le retrait actuel du politique au profit d'impératifs principalement économiques. Il explique en outre le paradoxe des citoyens que nous sommes, à la fois bien intentionnés et étrangement paralysés. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau has blazed a unique trail in political theory and philosophy since the early 1970s. In so doing, he has articulated a range of philosophical and theoretical currents into a coherent alternative to mainstream models and practices of conducting social and political science.

George Kateb's writings have been innovatory in exploring the fundamental quandary of how modern democracy--sovereignty vested in the many--might nevertheless protect, respect, promote, even celebrate the singular, albeit ordinary individual. His essays, often leading to unexpected results, have focused on many inter-related topics: rights, representation, constitutionalism, war, evil, extinction, punishment, privacy, patriotism, and more. This book focuses in particular on his thought in three key areas: Dignity These essays exhibit the breadth and complexity of Kateb's notion of dignity and outline (...) some implications for political theory. Rather than a solely moral approach to the theory of human rights, he elaborates a human-dignity rationale for the very worth of the human species Morality Here Kateb challenges the position that moral considerations are often too demanding to have a place in the rough-and-tumble of modern politics and political analysis. Rejecting common justifications for the propriety of punishment, he insists that state-based punishment is a perplexing moral problem that cannot be allayed by repairing to theories of state legitimacy. Individuality These essays gather some of Kateb's rejoinders and correctives to common conceptions and customary critiques of the theory of democratic individuality. He explains that Locke's hesitations and religious backtracking are instructive, perhaps as precursors for the ways in which vestigial beliefs can still cloud moral reasoning. (shrink)

Fraternity is a feeling, and a moral virtue, but fraternity is also a political concept. The French Revolution proclaimed an ethical and political ideal with its three principles: liberty, equality and fraternity. Since then, Western political philosophy has got to great lengths to analyze the liberty and equality, but has ignored, and even disdained, the third part of the revolutionary triad: fraternity. Forgetting or underestimating fraternity as a political category is unjustifiable. Political fraternity can help us to overcome some of (...) the main problems with liberal egalitarianism and theories of liberty in current social and political thought, and it contributes to a better understanding of the real significance of justice and democracy. In this book, Angel Puyol examines the theoretical and normative challenges of the political idea of fraternity, its history and meanings, its role in current political philosophy, its distinction regarding related concepts--such as relational equality, solidarity or civic friendship--the place that political fraternity should occupy in feminist criticism, and its relation to social justice, global justice and democracy in modern day politics. (shrink)

On republicanism as a philosophical idea, political view, and political movement in Indonesia; collected articles.

De democratie staat onder druk. Burgers koesteren wantrouwen jegens de politiek en jegens elkaar. Globalisering en neoliberalisme hebben geleid tot populistisch verzet en nieuw nationalisme. Om de oorzaken van het huidige maatschappelijke wantrouwen te doorgronden, moeten we onze eigen tijd ontstijgen en lessen trekken uit de rijke traditie van het democratisch project - van Machiavelli en Rousseau tot Tocqueville en Gauchet.0In 'Democratie op wankele bodem' bespreekt Donald Loose het ideologische fundament van de westerse democratie. In de rechtsstatelijke traditie, de representatieve (...) democratie en het sociaalliberalisme signaleert hij een continue spanning tussen vrijheid en gelijkheid en tussen politieke macht en oppositie. Politiek is altijd een voorlopige en onvolledige representatie van de samenleving geweest. De gelijkstelling van de politiek met de burgerlijke maatschappij is een illusie. De symbolische dimensie van het politieke vereist niet alleen een kritische waakzaamheid van de democratische instellingen, maar ook een zelfkritisch burgerschap dat de imaginaire identiteiten overstijgt."--Publisher information. (shrink)

This paper is about when associations, and in particular associations that are part of the state, should be treated as legal persons. I distinguish two forms of association – those that render coherent the agency of their members and those that are group agents – and argue that only the latter should be treated as persons. Following this, I discuss the conditions under which associations that are part of the state can legitimately be group agents.

Volume I. La naissance de la démocratie en Grèce ancienne.

Populist Discourse: Recasting Populism Research offers a refreshingly original discourse theory perspective on populist phenomena. Reading this book will help you learn the historical genealogy of significant populist phenomena from the end of the 19th century onwards and the main conceptual/theoretical accounts established to analyze them. Specifics on how mainstream conceptualizations of populism both in academia and public discourse are discussed in order to map new promising avenues for research beyond. Inspired by the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, (...) directions and challenges that open themselves up once conceptual reflexivity, theoretical awareness and historical alertness are established as guiding principles in populism research. Accessible language without sacrificing attention to detail, bibliographical support and a focus on the future orientation of populism research, The Populist Scandal is written for an advanced undergraduate and graduate-level school political theory reader, as well as for their professors. Due to its interdisciplinary character, it will appeal to various politically-informed area studies, and the broad field of ideology and discourse analysis. (shrink)

Democracy is valuable not only because it treats us equally but because it is intelligent. Democracies can make effective use of knowledge, engage in experimentation, utilise societal diversity, all the while motivating political leaders towards the common good. It is against the emergence of a new democratic scepticism, however, that this book defends the intelligence of democracy. Whether it be due to ignorant voters, irrational public debate, or disconnected politicians, a growing number now argue that democracies are destined to make (...) bad decisions. While these democratic sceptics see epistemic concerns as reasons for giving up on democracy, this book argues they are reasons to embrace it. Intelligent Democracy develops the first systemic account of democracy's epistemic value. Unlike approaches which focus on single institutions, this view conceptualises democracy as a network of actors which work together to produce epistemic benefits at the system level. While any one democratic body will be limited, this book analyses the divisions of labour within a broader deliberative system, and how best to combine inclusive elections, deliberative assemblies, random sortition, and the open public sphere. This systemic approach is shown to better explain democracy's epistemic value, while more adeptly responding to the challenges posed by the new democratic scepticism. It can demonstrate democracy's intelligence over regimes of epistocracy and political meritocracy which empower only the knowledgeable, but also overlooked proposals for granting greater powers to markets or polycentric governance. The result is a unique epistemic justification of democracy and a robust reply to democracy's critics. (shrink)

In his latest book, Daniel Innerarity warns of the gap between the political concepts that serve as our guide and our overly complex reality that has long ceased to respond to them. Arguing that this theoretical deficit leads to a political practice that simplifies and impoverishes our democracies, Innerarity proposes a modern update of key political concepts, from power and sovereignty to territory and representation. In doing so, this book presents a new theory of democracy for today's world that starts (...) from the premise that the most promising rejuvenation of our democracies is to make them more complex. (shrink)

Responding to growing public anxiety about the current state of democracy, this book will appeal to scholars in political theory, history and anthropology, as well as to the wider educated public. It provides an analysis of changes in the deep structure of Western democracy offering new imaginaries of political order.

Across the world, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used as a tool for political manipulation and totalitarian repression. Stories about AI are often stories of polarization, discrimination, surveillance, and oppression. Is democracy in danger? And can we do anything about it? In this compelling book, Mark Coeckelbergh offers a guide to the key risks posed by AI for democracy. He argues that AI, as it is currently used and developed, not only aids totalitarian regimes but also undermines the fundamental principles (...) on which liberal democracies are founded such as freedom and equality. How can we make democracy more resilient in the face of AI? And, more positively, what can AI do for democracy? Coeckelbergh advocates not only for more democratic technologies, but also for new political institutions and a renewal of education and culture to ensure that AI promotes, rather than hinders, the common good and helps us to revamp humanism for the 21st century. Why AI Undermines Democracy and What To Do About It is illuminating reading for anyone who is concerned about the fate of democracy. (shrink)

Is There Such a Thing as Populism? calls into question our common understanding of populism. Taken on their own, commonplace references to the people, leaders, or elites are more like dog whistles or false positives of populism than part of a serious attempt to address the phenomenon. Scholars asked themselves, "What is populism?" without realizing that this assumed there was such a thing and that we just needed to figure out what it meant. That was a mistake. Benjamin Arditi proposes (...) that we put this certainty on hold and start from a different premise, asking, "Is there such a thing as populism?" This doesn't rule out its existence or take it for granted. Structured as a set of polemical interventions and theoretical proposals, Arditi addresses key theoretical, methodological, and comparative questions in the study of populism. These include the limitations of formal definitions of populism, the importance of context and the conjuncture, polemics, the situated gaze, and issues concerning strategic relations and governing from below. Five subject experts, Nadia Urbinati, José Luis Villacañas, Carlos de la Torre, Anthoula Malkopoulou, and Anthony Spanakos, react to Arditi's theses in captivating conversations on how to study populism and the way in which populism has been used in contemporary comparative analysis. Refreshingly different and thought-provoking, Is There Such a Thing as Populism? is the ideal departure for the exploration of this diverse and fascinating political movement. (shrink)

This Open Access book explains the philosophy, design principles, and community organization of Decidim and provides essential insights into how the platform works. Decidim is the world leading digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, built entirely and collaboratively as free software, and used by more than 500 institutions with over three million users worldwide. -/- The platform allows any organization (government, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood, or cooperative) to support multitudinous processes of participatory democracy. In a context dominated by corporate-owned digital platforms, (...) in the era of increasing social structuring via Artificial Intelligence, Decidim stands as a public or community owned platform for collective human intelligence. Yet, the project is much more than its technological features. Decidim is in itself a crossroad of the various dimensions of the networked society, a detailed practical map of its complexities and conflicts. Theauthors distinguish three general dimensions of the project: (1) the political - shedding light on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations, (2) the technopolitical - explaining how this technology is democratically designed and managed to produce and protect certain political effects, and (3) the technical - presenting the conditions of production, operation, and success of the project. This book systematically covers those three levels in an academically sound, technologically consistent, and politically innovative manner. Serving as a useful resource and handbook for the use of Decidim, it will not only appeal to students and scholars interested in participatory and digital democracy but also to professionals, policy-makers, and a wider audience interested in learning more about the Decidim platform. (shrink)

The nature of state governance in consolidated liberal democracies has important implications for the ideal theory debate. The states of these societies are polycentric. Decision-making power within them is disaggregated across multiple sites. This rules out one major justification for ideal theory. On this influential view, the ideal furnishes a blueprint of the morally perfect society that we should strive to realise. This justification is not viable in consolidated liberal democracies because their states lack an Archimedean point from which the (...) institutional structure as a whole can be designed to accord with the true ideal – whichever it might be. However, knowledge of the ideal can still aid agents in those societies to determine the worth of more modest political objectives other than the ideal itself. (shrink)

This paper attempts to demonstrate that bottom-up popular vote processes (the optional referendum and citizens’ initiative) focused on ordinary legislation can help to improve democratic self-government by uniquely facilitating the development and expression of various forms of political agency. Most significantly, it is argued that such popular vote processes can be designed in ways that endow them with significant deliberative credentials. Methodologically, the paper employs Mark E. Warren’s problem-based approach to democratic theory, which provides the conceptual tools necessary to advance (...) a) a novel case for recovering popular vote processes as a valid institutional toolkit for exploration by democratic theory and b) an empirically informed set of best practices that can provide critical resources for normatively scrutinizing existing institutionalizations of bottom-up popular vote processes across the world. (shrink)

Voor het eerst hebben jongeren onder de achttien in Duitsland en België deze maand gestemd, bij de Europese verkiezingen. Nederlandse leeftijdsgenoten hebben dit recht (nog) niet. Te beïnvloedbaar, ze kunnen nog niet verantwoord stemmen, klinkt het. Deze tegenwerpingen zijn oneerlijk. Ze gelden ook voor miljoenen anderen die al wel stemrecht hebben.

Jeppe von Platz has recently argued that welfare-state capitalism can be justified by a theory of democratic equality, challenging John Rawls’s critique of capitalism. Von Platz develops his argument by introducing a social democratic interpretation of democratic equality as an alternative to Rawls’s justice as fairness. Unlike justice as fairness, in which there is only one possible principle of reciprocity (the difference principle), social democracy includes four possible principles in an eligible set that could be chosen as a principle of (...) reciprocity. However, I argue that von Platz’s conception of reciprocity still fails to justify welfare-state capitalism. Of the four principles of reciprocity in social democracy’s eligible set, one of them, the principle of utility, does not express a notion of reciprocity and thus does not belong. The other three – the principle of equality, the difference principle, and the principle of equity – are not compatible with welfare-state capitalism. Thus, since capitalism cannot satisfy a principle of reciprocity in the (revised) eligible set, it is incompatible with the social democratic interpretation of democratic equality. (shrink)

Much has been said about the potential of digital health technologies for democratizing health care. But how exactly is democratization with digital health technologies conceptualized and what does it involve? We investigate debates on the democratization of health care with digital health and identify that democratization is being envisioned as a matter of access to health information, health care, and patient empowerment. However, taking a closer look at the growing pool of empirical data on digital health, we argue that these (...) technologies come short of materializing these goals, given the unequal health outcomes they facilitate. Building on this evidence, we argue that not only debates on democratization need to be connected to concerns of social determinants of health but also debates on the impact of digital health need to go far beyond democratization and engage with concerns of health justice. (shrink)

In two different occasions in the twentieth century John Dewey and Maxine Greene stressed the point that educators should attend to ‘what the known demands of us’. Following this dictum, from a critical perspective and with a constructive pedagogical spirit, in this paper we portray a new paradigm for values education that addresses the major challenges to the sustainable futures of young people in the third decade of the twenty first century as well as proposing transformative and empowering educational strategies. (...) Employing the terminology of sustainability in its wider sense, we begin with a widely acknowledged diagnosis of the five major global risks – interconnected and interdependent – that endanger the sustainable future of humanity and nature: environmental, political, social, health, and cultural. We then move to suggest a constructive solution, proposing three conceptual pillars for repairing the world and laying foundation for a thriving sustainable future: (a) Ecohumanism as the paradigm for values education – merging the humanist concern for human dignity, social justice and democracy with the ecological concern for climate stability, biodiversity and environmental sustainability; (b) education of democratic personality and for democratic culture that is holistic and transformative; and (c) a threefold notion of activist pedagogy that addresses the element of cultivating personal agency, empowering political literacy and agency, and engaging students in experiential, holistic, and active teaching-learning experiences. (shrink)

We all know that renewable energies are important for environmental reasons. However, recent developments should open our eyes to the fact that they are even more critical for sustainable development. In this commentary, we argue that societal benefits should be included in renewable energy decisions. Specifically, we discuss their contributions to freedom, peace, and democracy.

On Civic Republicanism explores the enduring relevance of the ancient concepts of republicanism and civic virtue to modern questions about political engagement and identity.".

Algorithms are used to calculate and govern varying aspects of public life for efficient use of the vast data available about citizens. Assuming that algorithms are neutral and efficient in data-based decision making, algorithms are used in areas such as criminal justice and welfare. This has ramifications on the ideal of democratic self-government as algorithmic decisions are made without democratic deliberation, scrutiny or justification. In the book _Democracy without Shortcuts_, Cristina Lafont argued against “shortcutting” democratic self-government. Lafont’s critique of shortcuts (...) turns to problematise taken-for-granted practices in democracies that bypass citizen inclusion and equality in authoring decisions governing public life. In this article, I extend Lafont’s argument to another shortcut: the algocratic shortcut. The democratic harms attributable to the algocratic shortcut include diminishing the role of voice in politics and reducing opportunities for civic engagement. In this article, I define the algocratic shortcut and discuss the democratic harms of this shortcut, its relation to other shortcuts to democracy and the limitations of using shortcuts to remedy algocratic harms. Finally, I reflect on remedy through “aspirational deliberation”. (shrink)